me he was singing.
I do not know what it was for others, but for me, it was the only true
music that I had ever heard, the only music that I could have begged
might never cease, but flood over all the present and the future,
satisfying every sense. Other voices had roused and thrilled, this
filled me. I asked no more, and could have died with that sound in
my ears.

"Why, Pauline! child! what is it?" cried Mrs. Hollenbeck, as the music
ceased and Mr. Langenau. again came back to the circle round the table.
Every one looked: I was choking with sobs.

"Oh, don't, I don't want you to speak to me," I cried, putting away her
hand and darting from the room. I was not ashamed of myself, even when I
was alone in my room. The powerful magic lasted still, through the
silence and darkness, till I was aroused by the voices of the others
coming up to bed.

Mrs. Hollenbeck knocked at my door with her bedroom candle in her hand,
and, as she stood talking to me, the others strayed in to join her and
to satisfy their curiosity.

"You are very sensitive to music, are you not?" said Charlotte Benson,
contemplatively. She had tried me on Mompssen, and the "Seven Lamps,"
and found me wanting, and now perhaps hoped to find some other point
less faulty.

"I do not know," I said, honestly. "I seem to have been very sensitive
to-night."

"But you are not always?" asked Henrietta Palmer. "You do not always cry
when people sing?"

"Why, no," I said with great contempt. "But I never heard any one sing
like that before."

"He does sing well," said Mrs. Hollenbeck, thoughtfully.

"Immense expression and a fine voice," added Charlotte Benson.

"He has been educated for the stage, you may be sure," said Mary
Leighton, with a little spite. "As Miss d'Estree says, I never heard
anyone sing like that, out of the chorus of an opera."

"Well, I think," returned Charlotte Benson, "if there were many voices
like that in ordinary choruses, one would be glad to dispense with the
solos and duets."

"Oh, you would not find his voice so wonderful, if you heard it out of a
parlor. It is very well, but it would not fill a concert hall, much less
an opera house. No; you may be sure he has been educated for some of
those German choruses; you know they are very fine musicians."

"Well, I don't know that it is anything to us what he was educated for,"
said Charlotte Benson, sharply. "He has given us a very delightful
evening, and I, for one, am much