acher, perhaps the greatest living. Madame
wanted to come to Providence with me, but Doctor Stein insisted that I
come alone. I--I'm very glad she didn't, though they both love me and
await--" She paused and leaned her flower head back against the
wistaria vine.

And the great breath that Doctor Thomas Mayberry of Providence drew
might have cracked the breast of a giant. In this world no record is
kept of the great moments when a private individual's universe collides
with his far star and of the crash that ensues.

"I rather thought you meant another--another kind of fate. I was
preparing for confidences," he managed to say in a very small voice for
so large a man.

"Mais, non, Monsieur, jamais--never!" she exclaimed quickly.
"I--I--have been tempted to think sometimes I might like that sort--of
a--fate, but I haven't had the time. It was work, work, sleep, eat,
live for the voice! And--and once or twice it has seemed worth while.
My debut night in Paris when I sang the Juliette waltz-song-just the
moment when I realized I could use it as I would and always more
volume--and the people! And again the night in New York when I had made
it incarnate Elizabeth as she sings to Tannhauser--the night it went
away." And as she spoke she dropped her head on her arms folded across
her knees.

"Have you picked out the song you are going to sing first when it comes
back?" demanded the very young Doctor with a quick note of tenderness
in his voice, still under a marvelous control.

"Yes," she answered as she turned her head and peeped up at him with
shining eyes, a delicious little burr of a laugh in her throat, "Rings
on my fingers, bells on my toes, for Teether Pike. He is wild about my
humming it, and dances with his absurd, chubby little legs at the first
note. What will he do if I can really sing it? And I'll sing Beulah
Land for Cindy, and I'm sitting on the stile, Mary, for your mother,
perhaps, Oh, the kingdom of my heart for Buck, and Drink to me only,
for Squire Tutt, hymns for the Deacon--and a paean for you, if I have
to order one from New York."

"Do you know," said the Doctor after a long pause in which he lit his
cigar and again began to puff rings out into the moonlight, "I'd like
to say that you are--are a--perfect wonder."

"You may," she answered with a laugh. Then suddenly she stretched out
her hand to him and, as he took it into his, she asked very quietly
with just the one word, "When?"

"In a few we