r, and I have been
a very happy wife--far happier than I should have been had I continued
to believe myself in love with a memory."

There was truth in it, Margaret reflected. She went over to her mirror
and sat down before it, to study her face. She was forty-five, and the
bloom of youth was gone. The grey threads at her temples and around her
low brow softened her face, where Time had left the prints of his
passing. Her eyes, that had once been merry, were sad now, and the
corners of her mouth drooped a little. She turned away from the mirror
with a sigh, wondering if, after all, the dreams were not the best.

Moreover, the womanly instinct asserted itself. To be sought and never
to do the seeking, to hold one's self high and apart, to be earned but
never given--this feeling, so long in abeyance, returned to its rightful
place.

When the years bring wisdom, one learns to leave many problems to their
own working out. Margaret determined not to interfere with the complex
undercurrents which, like subterranean rivers, lie beneath our daily
living. It might happen or it might not, but she would not seek to
control the subtle forces which forever work secretly toward the
fulfilling of the law. To live on from day to day, making the best of
it,--this is a simple creed, but no one yet has found it unsatisfactory.

Lynn came in and went straight to his room. Margaret heard him walking
back and forth, as if in search of something. He tuned his violin and
she rejoiced, because at last he had turned to his practise.

But it was not practising that she heard. It was the concerto, every
measure of which she knew by heart. With the first notes, she felt a new
authority, a new grasp, and began to wonder if it were really Lynn. She
leaned forward, her body tense, to listen.

When he came to the adagio, the hot tears blinded her. Lynn, her boy, to
play like this! Her mother's heart beat high in an ecstasy of gratitude
for the full payment, the granting of her heart's desire.

The deep tones stirred her very soul. The passion of it made her
tremble, the beauty of it made her afraid. Wondering, she saw the
working out of it,--that at the very hour when she had surrendered, had
given up, had cast aside her bitterness forever, Lynn had come into his
own.

With splendid dignity, with exquisite phrasing, with masterful
interpretation, the concerto moved to its end. It left her faint, her
heart wildly beating. Through Lynn, Franz ha