lf or Beatrix in the many, many moons to come?

The strings and the wind took up the _Allegro_, and Thayer rose.
Lorimer, if he had been present, would have known what to expect from
the straightening of his shoulders and the sudden squaring of his jaw;
but Bobby Dane, who had been watching the apathy in which his friend was
buried, was distinctly nervous. Then, at the first note, his nervousness
vanished, leaving in its place only wondering admiration. Bobby had
supposed he knew what Thayer could do; but he was totally unprepared for
the furious dignity with which the singer rendered his aria,--

"_Consume them all,
Pour out Thine indignation, and let them feel Thy power._"

The applause did not wait for the orchestra to slide comfortably back to
the tonic. It broke out promptly upon the final note, and it satisfied
even Bobby. Thayer bowed his acknowledgments, and then returned to his
reverie; but he roused himself again at the _Adagio_ which announced his
second aria.

Then it was, in Paul's outcry for mercy, for the blotting out of his
transgressions, that Bobby Dane understood what Thayer had meant, that
noon, when he had spoken of being carried along by something outside of
himself. Bobby knew Thayer as a quiet, self-contained man of the world;
the Thayer who was singing that great aria was on fire with a passionate
madness, tingling with unfulfilled longing, striving against his whole
temperament for peace and for pardon. Bobby knew all this; he dimly
realized, moreover, that the singer was fired by love for the wife of
his friend, burning with the surety that his friend was unworthy of her,
and struggling with all the manhood there was in him to face that love
and that surety with the stoic calm of one of his Puritan ancestors, to
quench the fire and to cover the ashes.

Bobby joined him in the wings, at the close of the concert. Even in the
dim light, he could see that Thayer looked whiter than his wont, and
that the veins in his temples stood out like knotted cords.

"What business have you to be doing oratorio?" Bobby demanded, as soon
as they could struggle a little apart from the gossiping, gushing ranks
of the chorus which surrounded them, pulling surreptitious bits from
Thayer's mammoth wreath of laurel.

"Why not?" Thayer asked calmly.

"Because you are throwing away the best of yourself. Putting you into
oratorio is like icing tea. You belong in grand opera."

Thayer raised his brows d