d deserve
the penalty of being humbly begged to play that over again."

She looked at me, uncertainly.

"It would give me ever so much pleasure," I assured her.

At once she sat again and touched the keys. I know so little of music
that my opinions in regard to it are utterly worthless, but I knew at
once that she was no marvelous pianist. No, she was only a woman with a
soul for harmony, which found soft and tender expression on my mother's
old Steinway. Gordon, I noted, sat down in my worst chair, with an elbow
on his knee, his chin resting on the closed knuckles. It was evident
that he was watching her, studying her every motion, the faint swaying
of her shapely head, the wandering of her hands over the keyboard. Once,
she stopped very suddenly and listened.

[Illustration: No, she was only a woman, with a soul for harmony.]

"I beg your pardon," she said, "I thought it was Baby."

She went on, reassured, to an ending that came very soon. It left in me
a desire for more, but I could not ask her to continue. She had brought
a tiny bit of herself into the room, but she belonged body and soul to
the mite in the other.

"I am ever so much obliged to you," I said, as she rose.

"Madame," said Gordon, "it was indeed a treat."

"I am very glad you liked it," she said very simply, "and--and now I
must go back."

She smiled, faintly, and inclined her head. We had both risen and
thanked her again. She passed out of the room and, once she had regained
her own, I heard her faint, husky voice.

"It's mother's own wee lamb!" it said.

Gordon picked up one of my cigarettes, looked at it, put it down, and
took one of his own from his case. Then, he went and stood in front of
my open window, looking out, with his hands stuffed deeply in his
trousers pockets. I maintained a discreet silence.

"Come over here," he ordered, brusquely, as is often his way, and I
complied, holding on to my calabash and filling it from my pouch.

"Dave," he said, very low, that his voice might not carry through the
open doors into the next room. "Those powder-wagons aren't in it. When
the dynamite happens to blow up some Dago, it's a mere accident; the
stuff itself is intended for permissible purposes. A woman like that is
bound to play havoc with some one, and I'm afraid you're the poor old
idiot marked by fate. You're as weak as a decrepit cat. I can see the
whole programme; sympathy at first and the desire to console, all mixed
up with