the strings.

As the orchestra played a low accompaniment, there suddenly filled
the air a sound of deep melody, which swept down the aisles and
filled with melodious sweetness every corner of the big theater. It
was a melody such as sets the heart beating--a melody full of the
most witchingly sweet low notes.

Dorothy swayed back and forth to the rhythm of the music, and the
audience listened spellbound. To Aunt Betty and the other attentive
auditors it seemed that all the world was music--that, as played by
this young girl, it was the greatest and best of all earthly things.

As she played on, by, as it seemed to her, some strange miracle, all
her fears and tremblings vanished. Herr Deichenberg had been right,
and now her only thought was for her work--how best to do it to the
satisfaction of those who had honored her with their presence.

When it was finished and she had bowed herself off into the first
entrance, applause such as she had never heard before, thundered
through the building. Out she stepped and bowed, but still the
plaudits continued, and finally, walking out, she signified with a
nod of her head her willingness to respond with an encore.

She played a simple little piece far removed from the great
Rubenstein melody, and it went straight to the hearts of the
audience, as Herr Deichenberg, keen old musician that he was had
intended that it should. From that moment Dorothy Calvert had her
audience with her heart and soul.

As she swept into the concluding bars of the melody, the audience
fairly rose to its feet and applauded. She took seven bows before
the curtain was allowed to descend. The first part of the
entertainment was over and Dorothy sought her dressing-room to rest,
closing and locking the door so that no one might intrude on her
privacy.

There she lay, eyes half-closed, breathing rather heavily, more
from excitement than from actual physical exertion, while the
popular tenor whom Mr. Ludlow had engaged to assist in the concert
was singing a song from "Lucia." She heard his encore but
faintly--enough, however, to recognize one of the solos from a
popular comic opera, then someone rapped on her door and bade her be
ready for her second turn.

Words fail to describe the reception she met as she played Schubert's
Sonata, followed by the march from "Lenore," the latter seeming to
strike the chord of popular approval in a very forcible manner.

She bowed herself off again, after taking