ponge-cake, and was down at the
piano while still dusting the crumbs from her fingers. She struck the
refractory sheet of music flat upon the rack with her palm, and then
tilted her head over her shoulder towards Langbourne, who had risen with
some vague notion of turning the sheets of the song. "Do you sing?"

"Oh, no. But I like--"

"Are you ready, Bab?" she asked, ignoring him; and she dashed into the
accompaniment.

He sat down in his chair behind the two girls, where they could not see
his face.

Barbara began rather weakly, but her voice gathered strength, and then
poured full volume to the end, where it weakened again. He knew that she
was taking refuge from him in the song, and in the magic of her voice he
escaped from the disappointment he had been suffering. He let his head
drop and his eyelids fall, and in the rapture of her singing he got back
what he had lost; or rather, he lost himself again to the illusion which
had grown so precious to him.

Juliet Bingham sounded the last note almost as she rose from the piano;
Barbara passed her handkerchief over her forehead, as if to wipe the
heat from it, but he believed that this was a ruse to dry her eyes in
it: they shone with a moist brightness in the glimpse he caught of them.
He had risen, and they all stood talking; or they all stood, and Juliet
talked. She did not offer to sit down again, and after stiffly thanking
them both, he said he must be going, and took leave of them. Juliet gave
his hand a nervous grip; Barbara's touch was lax and cold; the parting
with her was painful; he believed that she felt it so as much as he.

The girls' voices followed him down the walk,--Juliet's treble, and
Barbara's contralto,--and he believed that they were making talk
purposely against a pressure of silence, and did not know what they were
saying. It occurred to him that they had not asked how long he was
staying, or invited him to come again: he had not thought to ask if he
might; and in the intolerable inconclusiveness of this ending he
faltered at the gate till the lights in the windows of the parlor
disappeared, as if carried into the hall, and then they twinkled into
darkness. From an upper entry window, which reddened with a momentary
flush and was then darkened, a burst of mingled laughter came. The girls
must have thought him beyond hearing, and he fancied the laugh a burst
of hysterical feeling in them both.

IX.

Langbourne went to bed as soon as he