“My dear Miss Anstruther, let me understand you. I admire you, but I don’t see why I should pity you.” Harold was puzzled. “Anne, he doesn’t know; Harold doesn’t know,” cried Miss Anstruther, and Anne laughed, when a sharp flash of lightning almost caused the page to drop the tray with the bottles and glasses. It grew hot; the wine was nicely iced, so the four young people drank and were greatly refreshed. Madame Recamier was justly proud of her cellar. Anne pledged Ned, and Harold touched glasses with Miss Anstruther, while the first thunder boomed in the windows, and the other boarders out in the back conservatory shivered and thirsted. Harold went to the piano. He felt wrought up in a singular manner. The electricity in the atmosphere, the spell of the dark woman’s sad eyes, her harsh reproof and her undoubted musical temperament acted on him like a whiplash. He called the page and rambled over the keyboard. Miss Anstruther sat near the pianist. Soon the vague modulations resolved into a definite shape, and the march from the Fantaisie in F minor was heard. It took form, it leaped into rhythmical life, and when the rolling arpeggios were reached, a crash over the house caused Miss Pickett to scream, and then the page entered with a tray. Harold stopped playing. Miss Anstruther, her low, broad brow dark with resentment, said something to the boy, who showed his gums and grinned. “It’s de wine, missy,” he said, and went out on ostentatious tiptoe. The group in the conservatory watched the comedy in the drawing-room with unrelaxed interest, though little Miss Belt declared the thunder made her so nervous that she was going to bed. Madame Recamier rang the gong twice, and a few minutes later a smell of cooking mounted from the area kitchen. Harold started afresh. The storm without modulated clamorously into the distance, and orange-colored lightning played in at the window as he reached the big theme of the bass. It was that wonderful melody in F minor which Beethoven might have been proud to pen, and was followed by the exquisite group of double notes, so fragrant, so tender, so uplifting, that Anne Pickett forgot her wine; and the other girl, her eyes blazing, her cheek-bones etched against the skin, sat and knotted her fingers and followed with dazed attention the dance of the atoms in her brain. She saw Harold watching her as she went to school; Harold peeping in at the lodge of her college; Harold waiting to waylay her when she left her father’s house, and she saw Harold that terrible night! He had reached the meditation in B and her pulses slackened. After the crash of the storm, after the breathless rush of octaves, Miss Anstruther felt a stillness that did not come often into her life. The other pair were sitting very close, and the storm was growling a diminuendo in the east. Already a pungent and refreshing smell of earth that had been rained upon floated into the apartment, and Harold, his eyes fixed on hers, was rushing away