ing her to sing again. The
women had taken up anew some broken thread of gossip, but the men were
at the piano, insisting too. Presently Miss Raritan resumed her seat,
and the men moved back. Her fingers rippled over the keys like rain. She
stayed them a second, and then, in a voice so low that it seemed hardly
human, and yet so insistent that it would have filled a cathedral and
scaled the dome, she began a ballad that breathed of Provence:

"O Magali, ma bien aimee,
Fuyons tous deux sous la ramee
Au fond du bois silencieux...."

When she had finished, Tristrem started. The earliest notes had sent the
blood pulsing through his veins, thrilling him from finger-tips to the
end of the spine, and then a lethargy enveloped him and he ceased to
hear, and it was not until Miss Raritan stood up again from the piano
that he was conscious that he had not been listening. He had sat near
the entrance to the dining-room, and when the applause began afresh he
passed out into the hall, found his coat and hat, and left the house.

As he walked down Irving Place he fell to wondering who it was that he
had heard complain of being obliged to give up cigarettes, not on
account of parental interference but because of a tournament. Yet, after
all, what matter did it make? Certainly, he told himself, the Weldons
seemed to live very well. Royal must be making money. Mrs.
Weldon--Nanny, as Royal called her--was a nice little thing,
somewhat--h'm, somewhat--well, not quite up to Royal. She looked like
that girl in Munich, the girl that lived over the way, only Mrs. Weldon
was prettier and dressed better, much better. Du hast die schoensten
Augen. Munich wasn't a bad place, but what a hole Innsprueck was. There
was that Victoria Cross fellow; whatever became of him? He drank like a
fish; it must have caught him by this time. H'm, he _would_ give me the
address of his shoemaker. I ought to have taken more from that man in
Paris. Odd that the Cenerentola was the last thing I should have heard
there. The buffo was good, so was the contralto. _She_ sings much
better. What a voice! what a voice! Now, which was the more perfect, the
voice or the girl? Let me see, which is the better fulfilled, the odor
of the lily or the lily itself? Tulips I never cared for.... That is it,
then. I wonder, though----

Tristrem had reached the house in Waverley Place. He let himself in with
a latch-key, and went to his room. There he sat a while, compan