During the evening he made one allusion to the forbidden subject. "You asked me to tell you nothing regarding the people who were at Caryl's, but perhaps the prohibition was not eternal. I spent an hour with Mrs. Heathcote this afternoon (never fear; I kept your secret). Would you not like to hear something of her?" Anne's face changed, but she did not swerve. "No; tell me nothing," she answered. And he obeyed her wish. In a short time he took leave, and returned to the city. During the remainder of the winter she did not see him again. CHAPTER XXIX. "The fierce old fires of primitive ages are not dead yet, although we pretend they are. Every now and then each man of us is confronted by a gleam of the old wild light deep down in his own startled heart." In the middle of wild, snowy March there came a strange week of beautiful days. On the Sunday of this week Anne was in her place in the choir, as usual, some time before the service began. It was a compromise choir. The dispute between the ideas of the rector and those of the congregation had been ended by bringing the organ forward to the corner near the chancel, and placing in front of it the singers' seats, ornamented with the proper devices: so much was done for the rector. To balance this, and in deference to the congregation, the old quartette of voices was retained, and placed in these seats, which, plainly intended for ten or twelve surpliced choristers, were all too long and broad for the four persons who alone occupied them. The singers sat in one, and kept their music-books in the other, and objecting to the open publicity of their position facing the congregation, they had demanded, and at last succeeded in obtaining (to the despair of the rector), red curtains, which, hanging from the high railing above, modestly concealed them when they were seated, and converted that corner of the church into something between a booth in a fair and a circus tent. Before the service began, while the people were coming in, the contralto pushed aside a corner of the curtain as usual, and peeped out. She then reported to Anne in a whisper the course of events, as follows, Anne not caring to hear, but quiescent: