ad fallen a victim to
Lorillard's undying charm.

As it was, I determined to shut up like a clam, and do as I would be
done by were I in the girl's place. If she'd slipped into loving her
employer, and he had thought best to banish her, for her own good, the
wound in poor Joyce's self-respect must be as deep as that in her heart.
Every sensitive nerve must throb with anguish, and only a _wretch_ would
deliberately probe the hurt with questions, in mere selfish curiosity.

"It's not your business," I said to myself. And I vowed to do all I
could to make Joyce Arnold forget--whatever it was that she might want
to forget.

She did come to me that afternoon. I had one spare room in my flat, and
I made it as pretty and homelike as I could with flowers and books and
little things I stole from my own quarters. The girl was pathetically
grateful! She opened out to me like a flower--that is, in affection. I
felt in her a warm, eager anxiety to serve and help me, not for the
wages I gave, but for love. It was like a perfume in the place. And
Joyce Arnold was intelligent as well as sweet. She had been highly
educated, and there seemed to be few things she hadn't thought about.
Most of the old aunt's money had been spent in making the girl what she
was, so there was little left; but Joyce would always be able to earn
her living.

If she tired of secretarial work, she could quite well teach music, both
piano and voice production. She had taken singing lessons from a famous
and successful man. Had her voice been strong enough, she might have got
concert engagements, it was so honey-sweet, so exquisitely trained. But
she called it a "twilight voice"; which it really was, and often I gave
up going out for the joy of having her sing to me alone in the dusk.

It was only at those times that I knew--actually _knew_!--how sad she
was, to the point of heartbreak. By day, when we worked or talked
together, her manner was charmingly bright. She was interested in my
affairs, and her quiet, delicious sense of humour was one of her
greatest attractions for me. But at the piano, before the lights were
on, the girl was at the mercy of her secret, whatever it might be. It
came like a ghost, and stared her in the eyes. It said to her: "You
can't shut me out. It is to _me_ you sing. I _make_ you sing!"

To hear that "twilight voice" of hers, half crooning, half chanting,
those passion-flower songs of Laurence Hope's, or "Omar," would have
wake