"Oh, don't, I don't want you to speak to me," I cried, putting away her
hand and darting from the room. I was not ashamed of myself, even when I
was alone in my room. The powerful magic lasted still, through the
silence and darkness, till I was aroused by the voices of the others
coming up to bed.

Mrs. Hollenbeck knocked at my door with her bedroom candle in her hand,
and, as she stood talking to me, the others strayed in to join her and
to satisfy their curiosity.

"You are very sensitive to music, are you not?" said Charlotte Benson,
contemplatively. She had tried me on Mompssen, and the "Seven Lamps,"
and found me wanting, and now perhaps hoped to find some other point
less faulty.

"I do not know," I said, honestly. "I seem to have been very sensitive
to-night."

"But you are not always?" asked Henrietta Palmer. "You do not always cry
when people sing?"

"Why, no," I said with great contempt. "But I never heard any one sing
like that before."

"He does sing well," said Mrs. Hollenbeck, thoughtfully.

"Immense expression and a fine voice," added Charlotte Benson.

"He has been educated for the stage, you may be sure," said Mary