and all the pent-up grief and
pain of the coming parting streamed from my eyes. I wept uncontrollably.

He did not interrupt my tears for some time. When he did speak, it was
in a very gentle voice.

"Miss Wedderburn, will you try to compose yourself, and listen to
something I have to say?"

I looked up. I saw his eyes fixed seriously and kindly upon me with an
expression quite apart from their usual indifferent coolness--with the
look of one friend to another--with such a look as I had seen and have
since seen exchanged between Courvoisier and his friend Helfen.

"See," said he, "I take an interest in you, Fraeulein May. Why should I
hesitate to say so? You are young--you do not know the extent of your
own strength, or of your own weakness. I do. I will not flatter--it is
not my way--as I think you know."

I smiled. I remembered the plentiful blame and the scant praise which it
had often fallen to my lot to receive from him.

"I am a strict, sarcastic, disagreeable old pedagogue, as you and so
many of my other fair pupils consider," he went on, and I looked up in
amaze. I knew that so many of his "fair pupils" considered him exactly
the reverse.

"It is my business to know whether a voice is good for anything or not.
Now yours, with training, will be good for a great deal. Have you the
means, or the chance, or the possibility of getting that training in
England?"

"No."

"I should like to help you, partly from the regard I have for you,
partly for my own sake, because I think you would do me credit."

He paused. I was looking at him with all my senses concentrated upon
what he had said. He had been talking round the subject until he saw
that he had fairly fixed my attention; then he said, sharply and
rapidly:

"Fraeulein, it lies with you to choose. Will you go home and stagnate
there, or will you remain here, fight down your difficulties, and become
a worthy artist?"

"Can there be any question as to which I should like to do?" said I,
distracted at the idea of having to give up the prospect he held out.
"But it is impossible. Miss Hallam alone can decide."

"But if Miss Hallam consented, you would remain?"

"Oh! Herr von Francius! You should soon see whether I would remain!"

"Also! Miss Hallam shall consent. Now to our singing!"

I stood up. A singular apathy had come over me; I felt no longer my old
self. I had a kind of confidence in von Francius, and yet--Despite my
recent trouble, I felt no