is work, his friends, and his general mode of life
precluded that. Because of all this, therefore, Arkwright did not--know;
which was a pity--for Arkwright, and for some others.

Promptly at five o'clock that afternoon, Arkwright rang Billy's
doorbell, and was admitted by Rosa to the living-room, where Billy was
at the piano.

Billy sprang to her feet with a joyous word of greeting.

"I'm so glad you've come," she sighed happily. "I want you to hear the
melody your pretty words have sung to me. Though, maybe, after all, you
won't like it, you know," she finished with arch wistfulness.

"As if I could help liking it," smiled the man, trying to keep from his
voice the ecstatic delight that the touch of her hand had brought him.

Billy shook her head and seated herself again at the piano.

"The words are lovely," she declared, sorting out two or three sheets of
manuscript music from the quantity on the rack before her. "But there's
one place--the rhythm, you know--if you could change it. There!--but
listen. First I'm going to play it straight through to you." And she
dropped her fingers to the keyboard. The next moment a tenderly sweet
melody--with only a chord now and then for accompaniment--filled
Arkwright's soul with rapture. Then Billy began to sing, very softly,
the words!

No wonder Arkwright's soul was filled with rapture. They were his words,
wrung straight from his heart; and they were being sung by the girl
for whom they were written. They were being sung with feeling, too--so
evident a feeling that the man's pulse quickened, and his eyes flashed a
sudden fire. Arkwright could not know, of course, that Billy, in her own
mind, was singing that song--to Bertram Henshaw.

The fire was still in Arkwright's eyes when the song was ended; but
Billy very plainly did not see it. With a frowning sigh and a murmured
"There!" she began to talk of "rhythm" and "accent" and "cadence"; and
to point out with anxious care why three syllables instead of two were
needed at the end of a certain line. From this she passed eagerly to
the accompaniment, and Arkwright at once found himself lost in a maze
of "minor thirds" and "diminished sevenths," until he was forced to
turn from the singer to the song. Still, watching her a little later, he
noticed her absorbed face and eager enthusiasm, her earnest pursuance of
an elusive harmony, and he wondered: did she, or did she not sing that
song with feeling a little while before?