ly--to bring happiness where only sadness was
before? As if it would not be a simple thing to rekindle the old
flame--to make these two estranged hearts beat as one again!

Not now was the Cause an IMPERTINENCE in tall black letters. It was,
instead, a shining beacon in letters of flame guiding straight to
victory.

Billy went to sleep that night making plans for Alice Greggory and
Arkwright to be thrown together naturally--"just as a matter of course,
you know," she said drowsily to herself, all in the dark.

Some three or four miles away down Beacon Street at that moment Bertram
Henshaw, in the Strata, was, as it happened, not falling asleep. He was
lying broadly and unhappily awake Bertram very frequently lay broadly
and unhappily awake these days--or rather nights. He told himself, on
these occasions, that it was perfectly natural--indeed it was!--that
Billy should be with Arkwright and his friends, the Greggorys, so much.
There were the new songs, and the operetta with its rehearsals as a
cause for it all. At the same time, deep within his fearful soul was the
consciousness that Arkwright, the Greggorys, and the operetta were but
Music--Music, the spectre that from the first had dogged his footsteps.

With Billy's behavior toward himself, Bertram could find no fault. She
was always her sweet, loyal, lovable self, eager to hear of his work,
earnestly solicitous that it should be a success. She even--as he
sometimes half-irritably remembered--had once told him that she realized
he belonged to Art before he did to himself; and when he had indignantly
denied this, she had only laughed and thrown a kiss at him, with the
remark that he ought to hear his sister Kate's opinion of that matter.
As if he wanted Kate's opinion on that or anything else that concerned
him and Billy!

Once, torn by jealousy, and exasperated at the frequent interruptions of
their quiet hours together, he had complained openly.

"Actually, Billy, it's worse than Marie's wedding," he declared, "_Then_
it was tablecloths and napkins that could be dumped in a chair. _Now_
it's a girl who wants to rehearse, or a woman that wants a different
wig, or a telephone message that the sopranos have quarrelled again. I
loathe that operetta!"

Billy laughed, but she frowned, too.

"I know, dear; I don't like that part. I wish they _would_ let me alone
when I'm with you! But as for the operetta, it is really a good thing,
dear, and you'll say so when you