"Death can take not away, Darkness and light are the same; We are beyond the pale ray, Wrapt in a rosier flame; Welcome which will to our breath,-- Life or Death!" When he began to play, all the stormy and conflicting feelings of the last few hours passed through his mind, and he was seized with the grimness and humor of the situation in which he found himself, and he played better than either of the two women, who were so strangely woven into his life, had ever heard him play before. When he reached the second verse he stopped humming the words, though none of them noticed it; and when he came to the end no one spoke for some seconds. The musician was thinking that he knew now which one he wanted to marry, and that it did not matter if his love affairs went wrong so long as there was music to be made. Lady Joan went on with her shawl, and reflected that if she lived to be a hundred she should never understand musical people or their ways. Norah lay with her brown eyes full of tears, and she was thinking that love was the strongest thing in the world, for it could outlive its ideals. The curate was not thinking at all, and he got up and put down his cup with a clatter. "Very sweet and pretty," he said; "it quite reminds me of a little Italian thing I once heard on a military band at Leamington. Have you ever taken the waters at Leamington, Mr. Raleigh?" "Play something else," said Lady Joan, abruptly, for the spell was working well, she thought, and she smiled triumphantly again at the tears in Norah's eyes. This time Lady Joan walked to the window and stepped out on the terrace. "Have you seen the lake in moonlight, Mr. Johnson?" she called out when the music stopped; and the curate followed her into the garden. The musician crossed over to the couch by the other window, and sat down on a chair close to it. "Norah," he said in a low tone, "do you know when I wrote the last thing I played?" She said nothing, and her fingers trembled. "I wrote it when you went away, last time, with your father. It was full of tears for you." She still kept her face turned from him, and she spoke almost in a whisper. "And the other? The song?" "Guess," he said, also in a whisper. She swept her tearful eyes round upon him searchingly, hungrily. "Was it this evening--after--?" He bowed his head gravely. Her hands went out to him impetuously. "Oh, Digby, did it make you feel all that?" * * * * *