a flying wedge of Madigans tearing through the hall, with
inquisitive Irene at its apex--except when she was asked to answer it.

The sisters' eyes met: those of the elder, in her thin, dark, flushed
face, hazy with romantic happiness; those of the younger bright with
romantic suffering, demanding a share of that felicity which
transfigured her senior.

"What're you reading, anyway, Kate?" she asked.

As well tap the bung of a cask and ask what it holds. Kate began
chanting:

"'Father, your child is ready! She will not
Forsake her kindred: she will brave all scorn
Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all,
Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say,
"Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves!"
Is it not written so of them? They, too,
Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse,
Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born,
Till beings lonely in their greatness lived,
And lived to save their people.'"

It poured from Kate's lips, the story of the lady Fedalma and her Gipsy
father, a stream of winy romance, a sugared impossibility preserved in
the very spirits of poetry.

Again the old bell jangled, and again. Kate was glutted, drunk with the
sound of the verbal music that had been chorusing behind her lips; while
for Irene every word seemed charged with the significance of special
revelation. The light seemed to leap from her sister's eyes to kindle a
conflagration in her own.

"Read it again--that part--Kate! Read it!" she cried.

And Kate, not a bit loath, turned the page and repeated:

"'Lay the young eagle in what nest you will,
The cry and swoop of eagles overhead
Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame,
And make it spread its wings and poise itself
For the eagle's flight.'"

Split breathed again, a full, deep breath of satisfaction. An
Indian--she, Split Madigan? Perhaps; but an Indian princess, then, with
a mission as great, glorious, and impossible as Fedalma's own.

When at last she did turn mechanically to answer the bell, she saw that
Sissy had anticipated her and was showing old Professor Trask into the
parlor. Ordinarily Irene loved to listen at the door while Sissy's
lesson was in progress; for Trask was a nervous, disappointed wreck,
whose idea of teaching music seemed to be to make his pupils as much
like himself as harried youth can be like worried age. But on this great
day the joy of hearing the perfect S