ose
near him all the warmth and radiance of his rich nature, all the homage
of the poet and troubadour, and, when they were no longer near,
forgetting--for that also was a part of Adriance's gift.

Three weeks after Everett had sent his cable, when he made his daily call
at the gaily painted ranch-house, he found Katharine laughing like a
girl. "Have you ever thought," she said, as he entered the music-room,
"how much these seances of ours are like Heine's 'Florentine Nights,'
except that I don't give you an opportunity to monopolize the
conversation?" She held his hand longer than usual as she greeted him.
"You are the kindest man living, the kindest," she added, softly.

Everett's grey face coloured faintly as he drew his hand away, for he
felt that this time she was looking at him, and not at a whimsical
caricature of his brother.

She drew a letter with a foreign postmark from between the leaves of a
book and held it out, smiling. "You got him to write it. Don't say you
didn't, for it came direct, you see, and the last address I gave him was
a place in Florida. This deed shall be remembered of you when I am with
the just in Paradise. But one thing you did not ask him to do, for you
didn't know about it. He has sent me his latest work, the new sonata, and
you are to play it for me directly. But first for the letter; I think you
would better read it aloud to me."

Everett sat down in a low chair facing the window-seat in which she
reclined with a barricade of pillows behind her. He opened the letter,
his lashes half-veiling his kind eyes, and saw to his satisfaction that
it was a long one; wonderfully tactful and tender, even for Adriance, who
was tender with his valet and his stable-boy, with his old gondolier and
the beggar-women who prayed to the saints for him.

The letter was from Granada, written in the Alhambra, as he sat by the
fountain of the Patio di Lindaraxa. The air was heavy with the warm
fragrance of the South and full of the sound of splashing, running water,
as it had been in a certain old garden in Florence, long ago. The sky
was one great turquoise, heated until it glowed. The wonderful Moorish
arches threw graceful blue shadows all about him. He had sketched an
outline of them on the margin of his note-paper. The letter was full of
confidences about his work, and delicate allusions to their old happy
days of study and comradeship.

As Everett folded it he felt that Adriance had divined the th