ctacles flew to his
forehead, and his round face smiled genially at the laughing group.

"Done?" asked the fat young man with a smile. He reached out his hand
for the scrawled page.

Schubert drew it jealously back.

"Nein," he said quickly.

Tieze, who had come around the table, stood behind them, scanning the
barred lines and the scattered shower of notes. He raised a quick hand
to the group about the table.

"Gott im Himmel!" he said excitedly. "Listen, you dunderheads!"

Silence fell on the group. Every glance was turned to him. He hummed
softly a few bars of sweetest melody--under the garden's din.... The
notes stopped in a choking gasp, Schubert's hand on his throat.

"Stop that!" he said hoarsely. The paper had been thrust loosely into
his coat pocket. His face worked fiercely.

Tieze drew back, half laughing, half alarmed.

"Franz! Franz!" he said.

The other brushed his hand across his forehead and drew a deep breath.

"Ja," he said slowly, "I might have killed you."

Tieze nodded. A look of curiosity held his face.

"It is schoen!" he said softly. "Schoen!"

Schubert turned abruptly.

"It is not for you.... For years I search that song, over mountains, in
the storm, in the sunshine; but it has never come--till here." His eye
swept the crowded place. "Now I have it"--he patted the rough coat
pocket--"now I have it, I go away."

VI

The girl sitting on a rough bench by the low building stirred slightly.
She glanced behind her. Deep blackness in the wood, shifting moonshine
about her. She breathed a quick sigh. It was like that other night. Ah,
he would not come!

Her face fell forward into her slender fingers. She sat immovable. The
shadow trembled a little, but the girl by the low house was blind and
deaf. Melodies of the past were about her. The shadow moved, but she had
no eyes to see; slowly it travelled across the short-cropped grass,
mystically green and white in the waning moon. Noiselessly it came; it
sank noiselessly into the shadow of the low house. A sound clicked and
was still. But the girl had not moved--memory music held her. It moved
upon her spirit, low and sweet, and stirred the pulse, and breathed
itself away.

She stirred a little, and laid her cheek upon her palm. Her opened eyes
rested carelessly on the ground; her look flashed wide and leaped to the
lattice window beside her, and back again to the ground. A block of
light lay there, clear and defined. It was