blocks of New South Wales. The gallant ease, the natural
gayety, the charming manners that charmed no less for a clear trace of
mannerism, were a peculiar refreshment after society racier of Riverina
soil. Yet it was none of these things which attracted this woman to this
man; for the susceptible girl was dead in her for the time being; but
the desperate artist was alive again after many weeks, was panting for
fresh life, was catching at a straw. He had heard her sing. It had
brought him galloping off the track. He praised her voice; and he
knew--he knew what singing was.

Who could he be? Not . . . could that be possible?

"Sing me this," he said, suddenly, and, seating himself at the piano,
played the opening bars of a vocal adaptation of Handel's Largo with a
just, though unpractised, touch.

Nothing could have afforded a finer hearing of the quality and the
compass of her voice, and she knew of old how well it suited her; yet at
the outset, from the sheer excitement of her suspicion, Hilda Bouverie
was shaky to the point of a pronounced tremolo. It wore off with the
lengthening cadences, and in a minute the little building was bursting
with her voice, while the pianist swayed and bent upon his stool with
the exuberant sympathy of a brother in art. And when the last rich note
had died away he wheeled about, and so sat silent for many moments,
looking curiously on her flushed face and panting bosom.

"I can't place your voice," he said, at last. "It's both voices--the
most wonderful compass in the world--and the world will tell you so,
when you go back to it, as go back you must and shall. May I ask the
name of your master?"

"My own name--Bouverie. It was my father. He is dead."

Her eyes glistened.

"You did not go to another?"

"I had no money. Besides, he had lived for what you say; when he died
with his dream still a dream, I said I would do the same, and I came up
here."

She had turned away. A less tactful interlocutor had sought plainer
repudiation of the rash resolve; this one rose and buried himself in
more songs.

"I have heard you in Grand Opera, and in something really grand," he
said. "Now I want a song, the simpler the better."

Behind his back a daring light came into the moist eyes.

"There is one of Mrs. Clarkson's," she said. "She would never forgive me
for singing it, but I have heard it from her so often, I know so well
how it ought to go."

And, fetching the song from a cabinet,