dded and smiled.

"If David will accompany me," she said then. David left sandwiches
and beer but without enthusiasm. He crossed over to the piano, and
peered up at her with a kind of sombre malice.

"So you will sing now," he said. "Will this do?" He played a few
notes softly, and she nodded with a little smile.

It was a song about the love of a white-throated sparrow for a
birch-tree of the North. All summer long the bird lived on the
topmost branch and sang most beautifully. The season of southward
journey came, but the white throated sparrow would not leave her tree.
She stayed on alone, singing while the leaves turned gold and fell.
She sang more faintly as the land grew white with the first snows
and when she could sing no longer for the cold, she nestled down in
a bare hollow of the white tree and let the driving flakes of the
North cover her.

Oliver stood near the piano. Myra sang to and for him. She stood
very tall and straight, her hair, loosened from its tight bands,
soft around her face. Her voice thrilled out in the mate-call, grew
fainter and sweeter as winter came on, grew poignant under the cold,
quivered on the last note. As David Cannon ended with the fate theme
of the tree, a genuine shiver went through the little group. There
was no hesitation this time in the applause. They swept forward,
surrounding her, begging her to sing again. But it was to Oliver
that she turned.

"It pleased you? I'm glad."

David Cannon said nothing. He sat, his shoulders hunched, his
fingers on the keys until she had refused to sing again.

"I didn't think you would," he said then, and abruptly left his post
to go back to beer and sandwiches. Soon after he slipped out. Myra
went with him to the hall, where they talked for a while in low
voices. When she came back into the room she was smiling serenely.

She and Oliver were alone at last.

"You glorious creature!" he cried. "I'm so proud of you! Everyone
was crazy about the way you sang." She walked slowly toward him.

"Oliver," she said, "I told David this evening that I wouldn't go to
South America with him."

"You didn't!" His voice rose sharp and shocked.

She nodded, beaming almost mischievously.

"But I did, and nothing will make me change my mind."

"How could you be so impulsive, so foolish!" he cried.

She was looking at him now more soberly.

"Aren't you glad?"

"Myra, you mustn't! I'll telephone David at once.. I'll--you did
this for me. I