So perplexed, bewildered, overwrought did he become with all these thoughts that he forced himself to make some excuse and stay away from Christine. When at last he went again, it was late in the evening and his time, he knew, would be short. It was three days now since he had been, and his blood flowed quick with impatience. He had thought of little else as he sat through the long dinner, eating the dishes set before him while he talked with a certain preoccupation to the beautiful _debutante_ whom he had brought in, and who made herself her most fascinating for him, Noel being just the sort of man to represent such a girl's ideal--older, graver, more finished in manner than herself, and possessed of the still greater charm of being thoroughly initiated in all the mysteries of the great world, across whose threshold only she had seen. She was exceedingly pretty, and Noel was too much an artist not to be alive to it, but as he looked at the fair, unwritten page her face represented to him, he was seeing, in his mind's eye, that far lovelier face on which the spiritualizing, beautifying hand of sorrow had been laid. He had not gone thus far on his journey of life without deep suffering himself, and the heart that had suffered was the one to which he felt his true kinship. At the close of the dinner the whole party adjourned to the opera, Noel alone excusing himself, at the door of the _debutante's_ carriage, on the plea of an important engagement. The lovely bud looked vexed and disappointed, but Noel knew his place at her side would be abundantly filled, and got himself away with all the haste decorum permitted. When he rang at Mrs. Murray's door Harriet ushered him into the little drawing-room where Christine was seated at the piano singing. Mrs. Murray was not present. Motioning the servant not to announce him he took his position behind a screen, where he could see and hear without being seen. Christine had heard neither his ring nor his entrance, so she was utterly unconscious of any presence but her own, and indeed most probably not of that, for there was a strange abandonment to sway of the song as her voice, rich and full and deep, sang softly: "I am weary with rowing, with rowing, Let me drift adown with the stream. I am weary with rowing, with rowing, Let me lay me down and dream." Noel knew the little song well, and in his fancy the full, pathetic voice gave it a sound and meaning that his longing heart desired to hear in it. The thrilling voice sang on, low and deep and full: "The stream in its flowing, its flowing, Shall bear us adown to the sea. I am weary with rowing, with rowing, I yield me to love and to thee. I can struggle no longer, no longer, Here in thine arms let me lie, In thine arms which are stronger, are stronger Than all on the earth, let me die."