ld not always be gay and pretty, and enjoy
herself; that she would make a capital wife for somebody, and perhaps it
was about time to think of "settling," as his sister often said. These
thoughts came and went as he watched the white figure in front, felt
the enchantment of the music, and found everybody unusually blithe and
beautiful. He had heard the opera many times, but it had never seemed
so fine before, perhaps because he had never happened to have had an
ingenuous young face so near him in which the varying emotions born of
the music, and the romance it portrayed, came and went so eloquently
that it was impossible to help reading them. Polly did not know that
this was why he leaned down so often to speak to her, with an expression
which she did not understand but liked very much nevertheless.

"Don't shut your eyes, Polly. They are so full of mischief to-night, I
like to see them," said Tom, after idly wondering for a minute if she
knew how long and curly her lashes were.

"I don't wish to look affected, but the music tells the story so much
better than the acting that I don't care to look on half the time,"
answered Polly, hoping Tom would n't see the tears she had so cleverly
suppressed.

"Now I like the acting best. The music is all very fine, I know, but it
does seem so absurd for people to go round telling tremendous secrets at
the top of their voices. I can't get used to it."

"That 's because you 've more common-sense than romance. I don't mind
the absurdity, and quite long to go and comfort that poor girl with
the broken heart," said Polly with a sigh as the curtain fell on a most
affecting tableau.

"What's-his-name is a great jack not to see that she adores him. In
real life we fellows ain't such bats as all that," observed Tom, who had
decided opinions on many subjects that he knew very little about, and
expressed them with great candor.

A curious smile passed over Polly's face and she put up her glass to
hide her eyes, as she said: "I think you are bats sometimes, but women
are taught to wear masks, and that accounts for it, I suppose."

"I don't agree. There 's precious little masking nowadays; wish there
was a little more sometimes," added Tom, thinking of several blooming
damsels whose beseeching eyes had begged him not to leave them to wither
on the parent stem.

"I hope not, but I guess there 's a good deal more than any one would
suspect."

"What can you know about broken hearts and