ried to the piano.

It was a bad ten minutes that Bertram Henshaw spent then. How he could
love a song and hate it at the same time he did not understand; but he
knew that he was doing exactly that. To hear Billy carol "Sweetheart, my
sweetheart!" with that joyous tenderness was bliss unspeakable--until he
remembered that Arkwright wrote the "Sweetheart, my sweetheart!" then it
was--(Even in his thoughts Bertram bit the word off short. He was not a
swearing man.) When he looked at Billy now at the piano, and thought of
her singing--as she said she had sung--that song to him all through the
last three days, his heart glowed. But when he looked at her and thought
of Arkwright, who had made possible that singing, his heart froze with
terror.

From the very first it had been music that Bertram had feared. He could
not forget that Billy herself had once told him that never would she
love any man better than she loved her music; that she was not going
to marry. All this had been at the first--the very first. He had boldly
scorned the idea then, and had said:

"So it's music--a cold, senseless thing of spidery marks on clean white
paper--that is my only rival!"

He had said, too, that he was going to win. And he had won--but
not until after long weeks of fearing, hoping, striving, and
despairing--this last when Kate's blundering had nearly made her
William's wife. Then, on that memorable day in September, Billy had
walked straight into his arms; and he knew that he had, indeed, won.
That is, he had supposed that he knew--until Arkwright came.

Very sharply now, as he listened to Billy's singing, Bertram told
himself to be reasonable, to be sensible; that Billy did, indeed, love
him. Was she not, according to her own dear assertion, singing that song
to him? But it was Arkwright's song. He remembered that, too--and grew
faint at the thought. True, he had won when his rival, music, had been
a "cold, senseless thing of spidery marks" on paper; but would that
winning stand when "music" had become a thing of flesh and blood--a man
of undeniable charm, good looks, and winsomeness; a man whose thoughts,
aims, and words were the personification of the thing Billy, in the long
ago, had declared she loved best of all--music?

Bertram shivered as with a sudden chill; then Billy rose from the piano.

"There!" she breathed, her face shyly radiant with the glory of the
song. "Did you--like it?"

Bertram did his best; but, in his st