told how terribly he was in earnest.

She answered, with a note of despair in her voice, "I wish with all my
heart I could, Dermott."

"And why not?" he asked.

"It wouldn't be fair to you. There is some one else," she explained,
bravely, a great wave of coloring coming to her face at the confession.

"Whom ye will marry?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think not. It seems as if I could almost say I
hope not."

"Dear," Dermott said, "I've loved you--always--ever since I've known
you. When you were just a wee bit girl in New York, six years ago, and
ye stood off the mob of boys who were baiting the old Jew--since then
I've taken every thought for you I could. And I'm asking you to believe
me when I tell you that I want your happiness more than my own. I've
felt always that you'll never succeed as a public singer, and here of
late, since I've known the St. Petersburg contracts were signed, I've
suffered in my thoughts of you. We'll just leave another suitor out of
the question. It's these public appearances of yours I dread at the
present. If stage life could be as it seems from the right side of the
footlights; if you knew nothing of the people or their lives, except as
Valentine or Siegfried, it would be different. But the meanness of it;
the little jealousies; the ignorant egotisms; I am afraid you can never
do it, you will despise it so."

He waited a little as though recalling stage life, in which he had taken
some active part, before he continued with a noble selfishness.

"And I dread this St. Petersburg experience! You, just a bit of a girl
alone, with nobody but an old Irishwoman and that Josef, who has a
rainbow in his soul but no common-sense in his head. So, whether you
care or not, I want you to know, to remember, if trouble comes, that
there's a man here in New York thinking always of you, _one who would
give his life to save you from pain_."

XXVI

DERMOTT MCDERMOTT

"You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man
Down on his luck and hard up for a V.
Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You'll find your latitude."

About Christmas-time the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an
engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely
courteous