s hat he dropped a bill and then handed it round to
millionaire and workingman alike. Ethel's purse was in her hand. As
he passed along the curb at which her carriage stood, he looked at
her eager face, and with a smile held out the battered hat. She, also
smiling, dropped her purse into it. In a few moments the hat was nearly
full; the old man and the money were confided to the care of an hotel
officer, the stream of traffic and pleasure went on its usual way, and
the musician disappeared.

All that evening the conversation turned constantly to this event.
Mostyn was sure he was a member of some operatic troupe. "Voices of
such rare compass and exceptional training were not to be found among
non-professional people," he said, and Judge Rawdon was of his opinion.

"His voice will haunt me for many days," he said. "Those two lines, for
instance--

'Tis the home of our childhood, that beautiful spot
Which memory retains when all else is forgot.

The melody was wonderful. I wish we could find out where he is singing.
His voice, as I said, haunts my ear."

Ethel might have made the same remark, but she was silent. She had
noticed the musician more closely than her father or Fred Mostyn, and
when Ruth Bayard asked her if his personality was interesting, she was
able to give a very clear description of the man.

"I do not believe he is a professional singer; he is too young," she
answered. "I should think he was about twenty-five years old, tall,
slender, and alert. He was fashionably dressed, as if he had been, or
was going, to an afternoon reception. Above all things, I should say he
was a gentleman."

Oh, why are our hearts so accessible to our eyes? Only a smiling glance
had passed between Ethel and the Unknown, yet his image was prisoned
behind the bars of her eyelids. On this day of days she had met Love on
the crowded street, and he had

"But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell;
Only their mirrored eyes met silently";

and a sweet trouble, a restless, pleasing curiosity, had filled her
consciousness. Who was he? Where had he gone to? When should they meet
again? Ah, she understood now how Emmeline Labiche had felt constrained
to seek her lover from the snows of Canada to the moss-veiled oaks of
Louisiana.

But her joyous, hopeful soul could not think of love and disappointment
at the same moment. "I have seen him, and I shall see him again. We met
by appo