have taken place.

One evening, shortly after the receipt of this letter, Madame de Nemours
told Katrine a piece of news for which she was not unprepared.

"By-the-way," she said, "Mrs. Lennox was here to-day. Mr. Ravenel is
expected in Paris to-morrow. I have asked a party to dine with them on
Friday."

Katrine had just said good-night to the Countess, and was standing in
the doorway, candle in hand, with the light shining full on her face, as
Madame de Nemours spoke; but she received the news with no change of
face, no tremor of an eyelid. She felt it a loyalty to old love that the
Countess should be forever unable to recognize in Frank the man whom
they had discussed so often, namelessly; and of whom Madame de Nemours
had such a slighting opinion. The strangest thing of all was that she
had for this man's coming; this man for whose presence she had longed
day and night for two years; the remembrance of whose words could
thrill her and bring tears to her eyes or a smile to her lips; that for
this man's coming, she had no thought save regret that he was to come,
and determination not to meet him.

"I want to be sent away, Illustrious Master," she said, the following
afternoon, to Josef, when the lesson was over, and they stood together
looking at the sun going down over the gray mist of the Paris roofs. "I
am not well, and there is some one coming to Madame de Nemours' on
Friday whom I do not wish to meet."

Josef looked at her quickly.

"Mademoiselle Silence," he said, "I, who read voices as others read a
printed page, understand. You had better see him."

Katrine flushed crimson, but changed suddenly to such a whiteness that
Josef thought she would have fallen.

"Forgive me," he said, tenderly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I am
the surgeon with the knife, but my work is almost done. Let me tell you
something. You have worked as I have never seen any one work before. I
have not praised much, but I have seen. Ah, I know! Tones, little, big,
staccato, breath, breath, breath! Over, and yet again over. And the
thinking a tone, which is the hardest of all. And the acting--to
conceive what a character's voice should be; to understand that the
timbre of Carmen's voice would not be that of Marguerite's; that the
soul of the voice must change for each character. To slave, to slave, to
slave, and suffer as you have done into the third year, is it not? None
other can know the value of it all as I know it, and at