s no one, they say, who could sing as she sang.

And she seemed to have caught it from her native mocking-birds, so
natural was it. Not when they sing in the daylight, when everything
is bright and joyous and singing is so easy; but when they waken at
midnight amid the _arbor vitae_ trees, and under the sweet, sad
influence of a winter moon, pour out their half awakened notes to the
star-sprays which fall in mist to blend and sparkle around the soft
neck of the night.

For like the star-sprays her notes were as clear; and through them
ran a sadness as of a mist of moonlight. And just as moonbeams, when
they mingle with the mist, make the melancholy of night, so the
memory of a dead love ran through everything Alice Westmore sang.

And this made her singing divine.

Why should it be told? What right has a blacksmith to pry into a
grand piano to find out wherein the exquisite harmony of the
instrument lies? Who has the right to ask the artist how he blended
the colors that crowned his picture with immortality, or the poet to
explain his pain in the birth of a mood which moved the world?

Born in the mountains of North Alabama, she grew up there and
developed this rare voice; and when her father sent her to Italy to
complete her musical education, the depth and clearness of it
captured even that song nation of the world.

The great of all countries were her friends and princes sought her
favors. She sang at courts and in great cathedrals, and her genius
and beauty were toasts with society.

"Still, Mademoiselle will never be a great singer, perfect as her
voice is,"--said her singing master to her one day--a famous Italian
teacher, "until Mademoiselle has suffered. She is now rich and
beautiful and happy. Go home and suffer if you would be a great
singer," he said, "for great songs come only with great suffering."

If this were true, Alice Westmore was now, indeed, a great singer;
for now had she suffered. And it was the death of a life with her
when love died. For there be some with whom love is a separate life,
and when love dies all that is worth living dies with it.

From childhood she and Cousin Tom--Captain Thomas Travis he lived to
be--had been sweethearts. He was the grandson of Colonel Jeremiah
Travis of "The Gaffs," and Tom and Alice had grown up together. Their
love was one of those earthly loves which comes now and then that we
may not altogether lose our faith in heaven.

Both were of a romantic te