ers on despair enriches every note. He has forgotten every one but
her, the pretty dainty creature who holds his heart in the hollow of her
small hand. She must hear the melancholy that is desolating and thereby
perfecting his voice; but, if so, she gives no sign. Once only her
fingers tremble, but she corrects herself almost before her error is
committed, and never after gives way to even the faintest suspicion of
feeling.

Through the glade the music swells and throbs. Mary Browne, drawing
instinctively nearer, seems lost in its enchantment. Monica, looking up
with eyes full of tears into Desmond's face, finds his eyes fixed on
her, and, with a soft, childish desire for sympathy, slips her hand
unseen into his. How gladly he takes and holds it need not here be told.

As he comes to the last verse, Ronayne's voice grows lower; it doesn't
tremble, yet there is in it something suggestive of the idea that he is
putting a terrible constraint upon himself:

"If regret some time assail thee
For the days when first we met,
And thy weary spirit fail thee,
And thine eyes grow dim and wet,
Oh, 'tis I, love,
At thy heart, love,
Murmuring, 'How couldst thou forget?'"

The music lingers still for a moment, ebbs, and then dies away. Ronayne
steps back, and all seems over. How Olga has proved so utterly unmoved
by the passionate protest is exercising more minds than one, when
suddenly she rises and with a swift movement bends over the fountain.
Another moment, and she has dropped the guitar into the water. Some
little silver ornament upon its neck flashes for an instant in the
moonlight, and then it is gone.

"Oh, Olga!" says Hermia, making an involuntary step towards her.

"I shall never play on it again," says Olga, with a gesture that is
almost impassioned. An instant, and it is all over,--her little burst of
passion, the thought that led to it,--everything!

"I hate it!" she says, with a petulant laugh. "I am glad to be rid of
it. Somebody made me a present of it whom I learned to detest
afterwards. No, Owen, do not try to bring it to life again: let it lie
down there out of sight where I may learn to forget it."

"As you will, madame," says Owen Kelly, who has been fruitlessly fishing
for the drowned guitar.

"It is curious how hateful anything, however pretty, can become to us if
we dislike the giver of it," says Mary Browne, pleasantly.

"Yes," says Hermia, quickl