"I didn't know he knew it," she said. "I heard it for the first time the
other day. A girl--I didn't hear her name--sang it for an encore at the
concert of the Musicians' Club. She sang it well, too. She was a queer
girl," Leila laughed, "a little bit of a thing, with all the air of a
tragedy queen. And you should have heard how she sang that! You know the
words?"--she asked me over her shoulder:

"And because I, too, am a lover,
And my love is far from me,
I hated the two on the sands there,
And the moon, and the sands, and the sea."

"And the moon, and the sands, and the sea," Dick repeated. He rose,
going to the window where Leila had stood, and looking outward. When he
faced us again he must have seen the worry in my eyes, for he smiled at
me with the old, endearing fondness and touched my hair lightly as he
passed.

"What was she like--the girl?" Standish asked, lighting another
cigarette.

"Oh, just ordinary and rather pretty. Big brown eyes that seemed to be
forever asking a question that no one could answer, and a little pointed
chin that she flung up when she sang." Dick Allport looked quickly
across at Burton, but Stan gave him no answering glance. He was staring
at Leila as she went on: "I don't believe I should have noticed her at
all if she hadn't come to me as I was leaving the hall. 'Are you Mrs.
Standish Burton?' she asked me. When I told her that I was, she stared
me full in the face, then walked off without another word. I wish that
I could describe to you, though, the scorn and contempt that blazed in
her eyes. If I had been a singer who had robbed her of her chance at
Covent Garden, I could have understood. But I'd never seen her before,
and my singing wouldn't rouse the envy of a crow!" She laughed
light-heartedly over the recollection, then her face clouded. "Do you
know," she mused, "that I thought just now, when the girl was singing on
the street, that I should like to know that other girl? There was
something about her that I can't forget. She was the sort that tries,
and fails, and sinks. Some day, I'm afraid, she'll be singing on the
streets, and, if I ever hear her, I shall have a terrible thought that I
might have saved her from it, if only I had tried!"

"Better let her sort alone," Burton said, shortly. He struck a match and
relit his cigarette with a gesture of savage annoyance. Leila looked at
him in amazement, and Dick gave him a glance that seemed to couns