oded the valley
with silver light. "Oh," cried Iris, "how glorious it is!"

"Yes," said the Master, "it is the light of dreams. All the ugliness is
hidden, as in life, when one can dream. Only the beauty is left. Wait,
I will play it to you."

He went downstairs for his violin and Lynn moved closer to Iris.
Fraeulein Fredrika retreated into the shadow at the farthest corner of
the room.

Presently the Master returned, snapping and tightening the strings. It
was not the Cremona, but the other. He sat down by the window and the
moonlight touched his face caressingly. He was grey with his fifty years
and more, but as he sat there, his massive head thrown back and his hair
silvered, he seemed very near to the Gates of Youth.

In a moment, he was lost to his surroundings. He tapped the bow on the
sill, as an orchestra leader taps for attention, straightened himself,
smiled, and began.

It was a rippling, laughing melody, played on muted strings, full of
unexpected harmonies, and quaintly phrased. In a moment, they caught the
witchery of it, and the meaning. It was Titania and her fairies,
suddenly transported half-way around the world.

Mystery and magic were in the theme. Moonbeams shimmered through it,
elves played here and there, and shining waters sang through Summer
silences. All at once there was a pause, then, sonorous, deep, and
splendid, came another harmony, which in impassioned beauty voiced the
ministry of pain.

As before, Lynn saw chiefly the technique. Never for a moment did he
forget the instrument. Iris was trembling, for she well knew those high
and lonely places of the spirit, within the borders of Gethsemane.

The Master put down the violin and sighed. "Come," faltered Iris, "it is
late and we must go."

He did not hear, and it was Fraeulein Fredrika who went to the door with
them. "Franz is thinking," she whispered. "He is often like that. He
will be most sorry when he learns that you have gone."

"This way," said Iris, when they reached the street. They went to the
brow of the cliff and looked once more across the shadowed valley to the
luminous ranges of the everlasting hills. She turned away at last,
thrilled to the depths of her soul. "Come," she whispered, "we must go
back."

They walked softly, as though they feared to disturb someone in the
little house, but there was no sound from within nor any light save at
the window, where the light of dreams streamed over the Master's face
and