tly up at him.

His voice grew gentle and he laid his hand on her shoulder. "You have
the secret, my child--to know the meaning of happiness, and not to be
afraid of sadness, but to pour it all into the music. That is the
secret, and it will make you a musician,--it will carry you far, I
think,--provided you don't neglect your practising," he added
brusquely.

She shook her head and laughed. "I wouldn't dare do that with such a
tyrant as you, dear master."

"Next week," he went on, giving a new upward twist to his moustache,
"I shall expect you to be letter-perfect with that G major concerto of
Beethoven--no more drum-beats, remember. And mind, you are not to
think of playing in public, at a concert, until I tell you. It may be
a long time,--a year, perhaps,--but I am not going to let them spoil
my sweetest rose by forcing her into bloom too soon."

"Despot," she laughed back as he patted her hand at the door, "if you
only had a kind heart I should love you--a little!"

On the way home to her tiny apartment in the Rue de Grenelle, where
she lived with her aunt and her younger sister, who was a student of
drawing, she walked through the Garden of the Luxembourg, thinking
about a concert. Not one of those which the master had forbidden to
her, but a very simple and foolish and far-away little concert in the
old hotel beside the Delaware. And the deep beauty of the forest came
back to her, and the long-shining reaches of the river, and the hours
of good comradeship with a boy who perfectly shared her joy of living,
and the breath of the pine-trees and the sweetness of the wild grape!
Did she really smell them now? No, it was only the faint fragrance of
the formal beds of hyacinths and tulips and jonquils on the terraces
behind the old palace. In the broad walks, children were running and
playing. Old men were smoking on the benches in a drowsy peace. In the
shady paths under the tall trees, evidently amatory couples were
strolling or sitting close together. Carola enjoyed it all--but there
was a look in her face, half sad, half smiling, as if she remembered
something better.

When she reached home, she laid aside her hat and scarf, and went into
the little _salon_. She sat down at the piano and let her fingers run
idly over the keys, wandering from fragment to fragment of soft music.
Then with a firmer touch she began to play the _humoreske_ of
Dvorak, but with a new phrasing, a new expression. It was full of
an in