ve. He opened many windows, and sat at
his piano in the moonlight. The two women drew as near as they dared, to
listen, while the Poor Boy's tantalized soul went out in splendid,
beseeching singing. Until after midnight Schubert and Schumann and other
lovers sang through the Poor Boy to their loves, and the women listened
and cried and trembled, or were carried upward as it were upon angel
wings into regions of pure and disembodied bliss.

At last there fell a long silence.

It was now the Poor Boy who listened. He had sent forth his questing,
questioning soul, and he waited for an answer. But in those regions,
that night, all things were still; and not so much as the hoot of an
owl answered him nor the chirp of a cricket.

"Oh," he thought, "there is no answer for me in all the world, no
answer. I have said all that I can say. And she--she doesn't hear--she
will not hear--she can not hear."

[Illustration: His fingers began to follow an air that flowed with
eternal sadness like blood from a broken heart.]

His fingers found their way once more to the keys, and for a while
harmonies rose in slow, quiet succession like a meditation, and took
more shape presently as if something had been decided on, and began to
follow an air that flowed with eternal sadness like blood from a broken
heart ... and then once more the Poor Boy was singing:

"Let us go hence, my songs, she will not hear,
Let us go hence, together, without fear.
Keep silence now, for singing time is over,
And over all things old, and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me, as all we love her.
Yea! Though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear."

He broke off abruptly. The knob had rattled in a door!--a door had
opened, and been swiftly closed. The Poor Boy leapt to his feet. He
thought he had heard _her_ voice.

He stood, and trembled....

* * * * *

That "Yea! though we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear," had
been too much for Joy. She had sobbed and said things, and had tried to
go to him. It was her voice that he had heard.

Martha had dragged her out of danger and sent her to bed with a
scolding. "The conceit of some people!" she had exclaimed. "To be always
thinking it's themselves as is grouped in the lime-light of another's
thoughts!"

XI

"You can get away from people, but you can't get away from moths."

It was Martha herself, carrying a