voted to daily practise. It was for this--for this
particular night--for this particular man. I saw it in a flash. I sang a
song in English. "In a Garden," it was called. Softly I played the
opening phrases, and then raised my chin a little and began. My voice
isn't strong, but it can't help but behave nicely. It can't help but
take its high notes truly, like a child who has been taught pretty
manners ever since he could walk.

After I had finished Mr. Jennings said nothing for an instant. Then,
"Sing something else," he murmured, and afterward he exclaimed, "I
didn't know! I had no idea! Your sister never told me _this_!" Then, "I
have come to a very lovely part in the beautiful book I discovered," he
said to me. "It makes me want never to finish the book. Sing something
else." His eyes admired; his voice caressed; his tenderness placed me
high in the sacred precincts of his soul.

"Listen, please," I said impulsively. "You mustn't go on thinking well
of me. It isn't right. I shall not let you. I'm not what you think.
Listen. When I first met you, I had just broken my engagement--just
barely. I never said a word about it. I let you go on thinking that
I--you see it was this way--my pride was hurt more than my heart. I'm
that sort of girl. His mother is Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall. They have a
summer place in Hilton, and--and----"

"Don't bother to go into that. I've known it all from the beginning,"
Mr. Jennings interrupted gently.

"Oh, have you? You've known then, all along, that I'm just a frivolous
society girl who can't do anything but perform a few parlor tricks--and
things like that? I was afraid--I was so afraid I had misled you."

"You've misled only yourself," he smiled, and suddenly he put his hand
over mine as it rested beside the music rack. I met his steady eyes.
Just for an instant. Abruptly he took his hand away, went over to the
fireplace, and began poking the logs. When he spoke next he did not turn
around.

"This is an evening of confessions," he said. "There are some things
about me you might as well know, too. I am an instructor, with a salary
of two thousand five hundred dollars a year. I hope to make a lawyer out
of myself some day, I don't know when. I've hoped to for a long while.
Circumstances made it necessary after I graduated from college to find
something to do that was immediately remunerative. I discovered that my
mother was entirely dependent upon me. My ambitions had to be postponed