his very existence.

"I--it is not settled," he faltered. "To-morrow perhaps. Yes,
to-morrow, he will call and then I will let you know."

"Oh, I thought you were to hear him to-day! I was rather anxious to
know what you thought."

Von Barwig felt quite guilty.

"Do you know I've been thinking of you quite a great deal," she said.

"You are too kind," he replied in a low voice.

Miss Stanton was evidently in a very communicative frame of mind, for
from that moment she talked rapidly on current musical topics. She
knew the latest operas, and loved the spirit of unrest, the unsettled
minor chords of the new school of music; preferred the _leit motif_ to
the _aria_, music drama to opera, and was altogether exceedingly modern
in her tastes. She did not like recitative in music, and preferred
Wagner and Tschaikowsky to Bach and Verdi. She loved to be stirred up,
she said. She liked Beethoven, yes, but he was too mathematical. As
for Handel, he was uninteresting in the extreme; and so she went on and
on.

The old man could only gaze at her in silence. There she sat, the
living image of his dead wife, talking musical matters in a foreign
tongue; an absolute stranger to him, and yet he felt drawn toward her
in a strange and unusual way. Who was she? What was she? Had the
dead come to life? What had happened? He could only look at her, and
feel so very, very happy. What did it all mean?

"How is your father?" he asked when there was a lull in the
conversation, brought about by Miss Stanton's pausing to breathe.

Her face fell. "He is in Europe," she said, and did not continue the
subject.

Von Barwig noticed that her face saddened when she spoke of her
father's absence.

"She must love him very much," he thought, and the thought brought him
to his senses.

"Don't be a fool, Barwig," he said to himself. "Her father is a
multi-millionaire, one of the great men of the country. Her mother is
dead, and you must content yourself with having dreamed that she was
yours. You must not look at her, you understand? Don't look at her,
or she will suspect what you think and you will be turned away. You
have had your dream. Now wake up, wake up!"

It was time for him to awaken, for she was asking him if he thought
that musical genius was allied to madness.

"I--I don't know," he replied. "I am not a genius!"

"Will you play for me?" he said, to hide his confusion.

"Not now," she replied. "I have an