, and Serviss keenly regretted his insistence.

Suddenly she sprang up with an impatient, choking cry. "I can't do it!
He won't let me!" she passionately exclaimed, and rushed from the room
leaving her visitor gazing with pity and amazement into the face of
the mother, who seemed troubled but in no wise astounded by her
daughter's hysterical action. She sat in silence--a painful silence,
as if lacking words to express her thought; and Serviss rose, rebuked,
and for the first time ill at ease.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lambert; I didn't intend to embarrass your
daughter."

"She is very nervous--"

"I understand. Being a complete stranger, I should not have insisted.
One of the best singers I ever knew was so morbidly shy that on the
platform she was an absolute failure. Her vocal chords became so
contracted that she sang quite out of tune, and yet among friends she
was magnificent."

The mother's voice was quite calm. "It was not your fault, sir.
Sometimes she's this way, even when her best friends ask her to play.
That's why I fear she will never be able to perform in concerts--she
is _liable_ to these break-downs."

He was puzzled by something concealed in the mother's tone, and pained
and deeply anxious to restore the peaceful charm of the home into which
he had, in a sense, unbiddenly penetrated. "I am guilty--unpardonably
guilty. I beg you to tell her that my request was something more than
polite seeming--I was sincerely eager to hear her play. Perhaps at
another time, when she has come to know me better, she will feel like
trying again. I don't like to think that our acquaintance has ended
thus--in discord. May I not come in again, now that I am, in a sense,
explained?"

He blundered on from sentence to sentence, seeking to soften the
stern, straight line on the mother's lips--a line of singular
repression, sweet but firm.

"I wish you _would_ come again. I should really like your advice about
Viola's future. Can't you come in this evening?"

"I shall be very glad to do so. At what hour?"

"At eight. Perhaps she will be able to play for you then."

With a feeling of having blundered into a most unpleasant predicament,
through a passing interest in a pretty girl, Serviss retreated to his
hotel across the river.

V

PUPIL AND MASTER

Once out of the spell of the immediate presence of this troubled
mother and her appealing daughter, Serviss began to doubt and to
question. "They are almost