oice
drew Jane's eyes to his in mute astonishment. "Go back at once and sing
it all over again, note for note, word for word, just as before. Ah,
don't stand here waiting! Go back now! Go back at once! Don't you know
that you MUST?"

Jane looked into those shining eyes. Something she saw in them excused
the brusque command of his tone. Without a word, she quietly mounted
the steps and walked across the platform to the piano. People were
still applauding, and redoubled their demonstrations of delight as she
appeared; but Jane took her seat at the instrument without giving them
a thought.

She was experiencing a very curious and unusual sensation. Never before
in her whole life had she obeyed a peremptory command. In her
childhood's days, Fraulein and Miss Jebb soon found out that they could
only obtain their desires by means of carefully worded requests, or
pathetic appeals to her good feelings and sense of right. An
unreasonable order, or a reasonable one unexplained, promptly met with
a point-blank refusal. And this characteristic still obtained, though
modified by time; and even the duchess, as a rule, said "please" to
Jane.

But now a young man with a white face and blazing eyes had
unceremoniously swung her round, ordered her up the stairs, and
commanded her to sing a song over again, note for note, word for word,
and she was meekly going to obey.

As she took her seat, Jane suddenly made up her mind not to sing The
Rosary again. She had many finer songs in her repertoire. The audience
expected another. Why should she disappoint those expectations because
of the imperious demands of a very highly excited boy?

She commenced the magnificent prelude to Handel's "Where'er you walk,"
but, as she played it, her sense of truth and justice intervened. She
had not come back to sing again at the bidding of a highly excited boy,
but of a deeply moved man; and his emotion was of no ordinary kind.
That Garth Dalmain should have been so moved as to forget even
momentarily his punctilious courtesy of manner, was the highest
possible tribute to her art and to her song. While she played the
Handel theme--and played it so that a whole orchestra seemed marshalled
upon the key-board under those strong, firm finger--she suddenly
realised, though scarcely understanding it, the MUST of which Garth had
spoken, and made up her mind to yield to its necessity. So; when the
opening bars were ended, instead of singing the grand song fro