e distant city lights.

"Dear old gentleman! His whole love-story, and my mother's, too,
perhaps!" Her quickened memory recalled childish impressions of a
visit to a large country house and of a solemn old man--he seemed
incredibly ancient to her--and of feeling that in some way she and her
mother were in a special relationship to the house. It was called "the
old red house," and was full of fascinating things. The ancient man
had bidden her go about and play as if it were her home, and then had
called her to him and laid open a book, leading her mind to regard its
mysteries. Greek! It seemed to her as if she had begun it there and
then. Later the mother became the teacher. She was nursed, as it
were, within sight of the windy plains of Troy and to the sound of the
Homeric hymns--and all by reason of this ancient scholar.

There was a vivid picture in her mind, gathered at some later visit, of
a soft hillside, a small white church standing under its balm-of-gilead
tree, and herself sitting by a stone in the old churchyard, listening
to the strains of a hymn which floated out from the high, narrow
windows. She remembered how, from without, she had joined in the hymn,
singing with all her small might; and suddenly the association brought
back to her a more recent event and a more beautiful strain of music.
Half in reverie, half in conscious pleasure in the exercise of a facile
organ, she began to sing:

"Free of my pain, free of my burden of sorrow,
At last I shall see thee--"

The song floated in a zone of silence that lay above the deep-murmuring
city. The voice was no more than the half-voice of a flute, sweet,
gentle, beguiling. It told, as so many songs tell, of little earthly
Love in the grasp of mighty Fate. Still she sang on, softly, as if
loving the entrancing melody.

Suddenly the song ceased, and the reminiscent smile gave place to an
expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper
shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and
found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like gaze was
directed upon herself.

Quickly as she rose, she could not turn into the path before the
gentleman, hat in hand, with a deep bow and clearly enunciated words,
arrested her impulse to flight.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle, I am a stranger in the city. I was directed
this way to Van Cortlandt Hall, but I find I am in error, intrigued--in
confusion. Would m