Maria Dolores joined in his laugh. "I did not know you sang," she said.
"Let me hear the other."

"A song," reflected he, "that I could sing with a good deal of feeling
and conviction, would be 'Give her but the least excuse to love me.'"

Maria Dolores all at once looked sober.

"Oughtn't you to be careful," she said, "to give her no excuse at all to
love you, if you are really resolved never to ask her to be your wife?"

"That is exactly what I have given her," answered John, "no excuse at
all. I should sing in a spirit purely academic,--my song would be the
utterance of a pious but hopeless longing, of the moth's desire for the
star."

"But she, I suppose, isn't a star," objected Maria Dolores. "She's
probably just a weak human woman. You may have given her excuses without
meaning to." There was the slightest quaver in her voice.

John caught his breath; he turned upon her almost violently. But she was
facing away from him, down the avenue, so that he could not get her
eyes.

"In that case," she said, "wouldn't you owe her something?"

"I should owe myself a lifetime's penance with the discipline," John on
a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little
tendrils of dark hair about her brow. "God knows what I should owe to