chose, might draw, until the room and the deck and the sea ached with
sweetness. I scarcely dared to look in to see who it was, lest I should
find it a dream. I stood with my head turned away towards the dusky
ocean. When, at last, with the closing notes of the song, I went to
the port-hole and looked in, I saw that the singer was Miss Treherne.
There was an abstracted look in her eyes as she raised them, and she
seemed unconscious of the applause following the last chords of the
accompaniment. She stood up, folding the music as she did so, and
unconsciously raised her eyes toward the port-hole where I was. Her
glance caught mine, and instantly a change passed over her face. The
effect of the song upon her was broken; she flushed slightly, and, as I
thought, with faint annoyance. I know of nothing so little complimentary
to a singer as the audience that patronisingly listens outside a room or
window,--not bound by any sense of duty as an audience,--between whom and
the artists an unnatural barrier is raised. But I have reason to think
now that Belle Treherne was not wholly moved by annoyance--that she had
seen something unusual, maybe oppressive, in my look. She turned to her
father. He adjusted his glasses as if, in his pride, to see her better.
Then he fondly took her arm, and they left the room.

Then I saw Mrs. Falchion's face at the port-hole opposite. Her eyes were
on me. An instant before, I had intended following Miss Treherne and her
father; now some spirit of defiance, some unaccountable revolution,
took possession of me, so that I flashed back to her a warm recognition.
I could not have believed it possible, if it had been told of me, that,
one minute affected by beautiful and sacred remembrances, the next I
should be yielding to the unimpassioned tyranny of a woman who could
never be anything but a stumbling-block and an evil influence. I had yet
to learn that in times of mental and moral struggle the mixed fighting
forces in us resolve themselves into two cohesive powers, and strive for