de you unhappy. What is it?"

"Tell me, Angelo, and truly; is your violin like other violins?"

This unexpected question came so suddenly he could not control his
agitation.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

"You must answer me directly!"

"No, Mildred; my violin is different from any other I have ever seen,"
this hesitatingly and with great effort at composure.

"In what way is it different?" she almost demanded.

"It is peculiarly constructed; it has an extra string. But why this
sudden interest in the violin? Let us talk of you, of me, of both, of
our future," said he with enforced cheerfulness.

"No, we will talk of the violin. Of what use is the extra string?"

"None whatever," was the quick reply.

"Then why not cut it off?"

"No, no, Mildred; you do not understand," he cried; "I can not do that."

"You can not do it when I ask it?" she exclaimed.

"Oh Mildred, do not ask me; I can not, can not do it," and the face of
the affrighted musician told plainer than words of the turmoil raging
in his soul.

"You made me believe that I was the only one you loved," passionately
she cried; "the only one; that your happiness was incomplete without
me. You led me into the region of light only to make the darkness
greater when I descended to earth again. I ask you to do a simple thing
and you refuse; you refuse because another has commanded you."

"Mildred, Mildred; if you love me do not speak thus!"

And she, with imagination greater than reasoning power, at once saw a
Tuscan beauty and Diotti mutually pledging their love with their lives.

"Go," she said, pointing to the door, "go to the one who owns you, body
and soul; then say that a foolish woman threw her heart at your feet
and that you scorned it!" She sank to the sofa.

He went toward the door, and in a voice that sounded like the echo of
despair, protested: "Mildred, I love you; love you a thousand times
more than I do my life. If I should destroy the string, as you ask,
love and hope would leave me forevermore. Death would not be robbed of
its terror!" and with bowed head he went forth into the twilight.

She ran to the window and watched his retreating figure as he vanished.
"Uncle Sanders was right; he loves another woman, and that string binds
them together. He belongs to her!" Long and silently she stood by the
window, gazing at the shadowing curtain of the coming night. At last
her face softened. "Perhaps he does not love her now, but fears her