The cat and kittens having returned to their place on the rug, Noel proffered a request he had been wanting to put all the evening and asked her to sing. He had found out on the steamer that she possessed an extraordinarily beautiful voice. Her face, which had grown brighter, clouded suddenly. "I cannot," she answered. "I don't sing at all. My husband got me a piano, thinking it would please me, but I have not opened it. I was afraid he would be disappointed, but he has not noticed it. I used to be sorry he was not fond of music, but this makes me glad." "Do you really mean that you are going to give up singing? If you do you must let me assure you that it would be very wrong, a wrong to others, to let such a voice as yours be silent." "Oh, do not tell me that," she said, "I want not to do anything wrong, but indeed I cannot sing. I have tried it sometimes when I sit alone, and it is always the same thing--I choke so I cannot sing. I will get over it, but don't ask me to sing yet." He could not say another word, especially as the tears were evidently near her eyes, and seeing that the hour was late and her husband, for whose return he had expected to wait, was delayed, he got up to take his leave. "Vill you not vait for Robert?" she said, speaking for the first time in English and showing already a greater ease in its use. "He vill not be late. I haf not know him to remain so long as this, since I am here." Noel smiled to hear her, but shook his head. "No," he answered, "I must go now, but first I want to get you to give me a promise." He put out his hand as he spoke, and she placed hers in it with the confidence of a child. "You are in a strange land," he said, "but I don't want you to feel that you are altogether among strangers. You may have some need of friends--trouble or sickness or some of the things that are always happening in this sad world, may come to you. I trust not. I hope to God they may let you go by, but we can never tell what will come to us, and I want you to promise me that if you are ever in need of a friend you will write to me. Your husband may be ill, or something like that," he added hurriedly, fearing he had ventured too far, though she showed no sign of thinking so. "And if it is a thing in which you want a woman's help, I have sisters and a mother and they shall come to you. Will you promise me this?" "I vill. Oh, I vill promise truly," she said. "But vill you not come more?"