these if it were not necessary
for him to make a living at the practice of some more prosaic
profession, "it's quite as much the interest of having such a stagey
character performing for us as it is his music. Did you ever see any
human being throw his whole soul into anything like that? One couldn't
help but watch him if he weren't making a sound."

"It's certainly refreshing, in a world where we all try to cover up our
real feelings, to see anybody give himself away so naively as that,"
Chester replied. "But there's no doubt about the quality of his music.
He was born, not made. And, by George, Len certainly plays up to him. I
didn't know she had it in her, for all I've been admiring her
accomplishments for four years."

"Ellen's all temperament, anyway," said Ellen's sister.

Chester looked at her curiously. Martha was a fine-looking young woman,
in a very wholesome and clean-cut fashion. There was no feminine
artfulness in the way she bound her hair smoothly upon her head, none in
the plain cut of her simple evening attire, absolutely none in her
manner. Glancing from Martha to her sister, as he had often done before
in wonderment at the contrast between them, he noted as usual how
exquisitely Ellen was dressed, though quite as simply, in a way, as her
practical sister. But in every line of her smoke-blue silken frock was
the most subtle art, as Chester, who had a keen eye for such matters and
a fastidious taste, could readily recognize. From the crown of her dark
head to the toe of the blue slipper with which she pressed the pedal of
the great piano which she had brought from her old home in the South,
she was a picture to feast one's eyes upon.

"Give me temperament, then--and let some other fellow take the common
sense," mused Arthur Chester to himself. "Ellen has both, and Red's in
luck. It was a great day for him when the lovely young widow came his
way--and he knows it. What a home she makes him--what a home!"

His eyes roved about the beautiful living room, as they had often done
before. His own home, next door, was comfortable and more than
ordinarily attractive, but he knew of no spot in the town which
possessed the subtle charm of this in which he sat. His wife, Winifred,
was always trying to reproduce within their walls the indefinable
quality which belonged to everything Ellen touched, and always saying in
despair, "It's no use--Ellen is Ellen, and other people can't be like
her."

"Better let it