ordeal and Mary would have had time for second thoughts.

Had I only known what the decision meant to me; the hours of mental
torment, the suspense, the dread loneliness, I would have obeyed the
inner voice and hastened to Mary's side that very moment, stripping all
wrong ideas and wrong impressions of their deceitful garments, leaving
them bare and cold and harmless.

I did not know, and, for my lack of knowledge or intuition, I had to
suffer the consequences.

Later in the evening, a yacht put into the Bay. It carried some ladies
and gentlemen who had been on a trip to Alaska and were now returning
south.

They called in for a few supplies, the getting of which I merely
supervised. They asked and obtained permission from me to tie up at
the wharf for the night.

After they had returned aboard and just as I was laboriously
undressing, I heard music floating across from Mary's. It was the same
sweet, entrancing, will-o'-the wisp music that her touch always created.

But to-night, she played the shadowy, mysterious, light and elusive
Ballade No. 3 of Chopin. How well I knew the story and how
sympathetically Mary followed it in her playing! till I could picture
the scenes and the characters as if they were appearing before me on a
cinema screen:--the palace, the forest and the beautiful lake; the
knight and the strange, ethereal lady; the bewitchment; the promise;
the new enchantress, the lure of the dance, the lady's flight and the
knight's pursuit over the marshes and out on to the lake; the drowning
of the unfaithful gallant and the mocking laugh of the triumphant siren.

The music swelled and whispered, sobbed and laughed, thundered and
sighed at the call of the wonderful musician who translated it.

I was bewitched by the playing, almost as the knight had been by the
ethereal lady of the music-story.

Suddenly the music ceased. I thought Mary had retired to rest. But
again, on the night air, came the introduction to the little ballad I
had already heard her sing in part. Her voice, with its plaintive
sweetness, broke into melody.

She lilted softly the first verse,--and I waited.

She sang the second verse. Again I waited, wondering, then hoping and
longing that she would continue.

The third verse came at last and--I regretted its coming.

A maid there was in the North Countree;
A sad little, lone little maid was she.
Her knight seemed fickle and all untrue
As he rode to war a