proached, and
the audible crescendo of their footsteps gave one warning, and prevented
one from being taken by surprise. While absorbed in these reflections,
his senses must have been dormant; for just then Miss Edith Van Kirk
entered, unheralded by anything but a hovering perfume, the effect of
which was to lull him still deeper into his wondering abstraction.

"Mr. Birch," said Mrs. Van Kirk, "this is my daughter Miss Edith," and
as Halfdan sprang to his feet and bowed with visible embarrassment, she
continued:

"Edith, this is Mr. Daniel Birch, whom your father has sent here to know
if he would be serviceable as a music teacher for Clara. And now, dear,
you will have to decide about the merits of Mr. Birch. I don't know
enough about music to be anything of a judge."

"If Mr. Birch will be kind enough to play," said Miss Edith with a
languidly musical intonation," I shall be happy to listen to him."

Halfdan silently signified his willingness and followed the ladies to a
smaller apartment which was separated from the drawing-room by folding
doors. The apparition of the beautiful young girl who was walking at
his side had suddenly filled him with a strange burning and shuddering
happiness; he could not tear his eyes away from her; she held him as
by a powerful spell. And still, all the while he had a painful
sub-consciousness of his own unfortunate appearance, which was thrown
into cruel relief by her splendor. The tall, lithe magnificence of her
form, the airy elegance of her toilet, which seemed the perfection of
self-concealing art, the elastic deliberateness of her step--all wrought
like a gentle, deliciously soothing opiate upon the Norseman's fancy and
lifted him into hitherto unknown regions of mingled misery and bliss.
She seemed a combination of the most divine contradictions, one moment
supremely conscious, and in the next adorably child-like and simple, now
full of arts and coquettish innuendoes, then again naive, unthinking
and almost boyishly blunt and direct; in a word, one of those miraculous
New York girls whom abstractly one may disapprove of, but in the
concrete must abjectly adore. This easy predominance of the masculine
heart over the masculine reason in the presence of an impressive woman,
has been the motif of a thousand tragedies in times past, and will
inspire a thousand more in times to come.

Halfdan sat down at the grand piano and played Chopin's Nocturne in G
major, flinging out that el