hardly heard what she said, but I know she
reproached me gently for not having been
to see them. I had no further word with
her till some one led her to the piano, and
she paused to say, --

"That poet you spoke of to me -- the one
you said was a friend of yours -- he is my
friend now too, and I have learned to sing
some of his songs. I am going to sing one
now." She seemed to have no timidity at
all, but stood quietly, with a half smile,
while a young man with a Russian name
played a strange minor prelude. Then she
sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at
times, and again lit up with gleams of pas-
sion. The music itself was fitful, now full
of joy, now tender, and now sad:


"Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands,
Ah! longer, longer we."


"She has a genius for feeling, hasn't
she?" Leroy whispered to me.

"A genius for feeling!" I repeated,