voice spoke its powerful language. Du Maurier and she were soon on a
brother and sisterly footing, and they ever remained so.

[Illustration: CLARA MOSCHELES.]

Of the pleasant evenings we of the circle spent together I recall one
in particular. My sister had been singing one song after another;
my father was engaged in an animated conversation with Stefani,
the pianist, on the relative merits of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Du
Maurier and I had been sitting at the farther end of the room, talking
of his eyes. At that time one doctor held out hopes; another, a great
authority, had considered it his painful duty not to conceal the
truth from his patient, and had, with much unction and the necessary
complement of professional phraseology, prepared him for the worst.
The sight of one eye had gone, that of the other would follow. Those
were anxious days, both for him and for his friends; but, whatever
he felt, he could talk about his trouble with perfect equanimity,
and I often wondered how quietly he took it, and how cheerfully he
would tell me that he was "fearfully depressed." That evening I had
been putting the chances of a speedy recovery before him, and making
predictions based, I am bound to admit, on nothing more substantial
than my ardent hopes. But du Maurier was too much of a philosopher to
be satisfied with such encouragement as I could give, and said: "No, I
had better face the enemy and be prepared for the worst. If it comes,
you see, my dear fellow, there is Nature's law of compensation, and
I firmly believe that one cannot lose one faculty without being
compensated by some great gain elsewhere. I suppose one gets to see
more inside as things grow darker outside. If one can't paint, one
must do something else--write perhaps; that is, as long as one can,
and then, if the steam accumulates, and one wants a safety valve to