na," he went on,
bitterly, "nobody touches it but mineself."

His distress was very real, and, for the first time, Irving felt a throb
of sympathy. However unreasonable it might be, however weak and
childish, he saw that he had unwittingly touched a tender place. All the
love of the hale old heart was centred upon the violin, wooden,
inanimate--but no. Nothing can be inanimate, which is sweetheart and
child in one.

"Herr Kaufmann," said Lynn, "believe me, if any act of mine could wipe
away my touch, I should do it here and now. As it is, I can only ask
your pardon."

"We will no longer speak of it," returned the Master, with quiet
dignity. "We will attempt to forget."

He went to the window and stood with his back to Irving for a long time.
"What could I have done?" thought Lynn. "I only picked it up and laid it
down again--I surely did not harm it."

He was too young to see that it was the significance, rather than the
touch; that the old man felt as a lover might who saw his beloved in the
arms of another. The bloom was gone from the fruit, the fragrance from
the rose. For twenty-five years and more, the Cremona had been sacredly
kept.

The Master's thoughts had leaped that quarter-century at a single bound.
Again he stood in the woods beyond East Lancaster, while the sky was
dark with threatening clouds and the dead leaves scurried in fright
before the north wind. Beside him stood a girl of twenty, her face white
and her sweet mouth quivering.

"You must take it," she was saying. "It is mine to do with as I please,
and no one will ever know. If anyone asks, I can fix it someway. It is
part of myself that I give you, so that in all the years, you will not
forget me. When you touch it, it will be as though you took my hand in
yours. When it sings to you, it will be my voice saying: 'I love you!'
And in it you will find all the sweetness of this one short year. All
the pain will be blotted out and only the joy will be left--the joy that
we can never know!"

Her voice broke in a sob, then the picture faded in a mist of blinding
tears. Dull thunders boomed afar, and he felt her lips crushed for an
instant against his own. When clear sight came back, the storm was
raging, and he was alone.

Irving waited impatiently, for he was restless and longed to get away,
but he dared not speak. At last the old man turned away from the window,
his face haggard and grey.

"You will take me?" asked Lynn, with a note of pl