At the last note, Freckles' voice ceased and he looked at the Angel. He had given his best and his all. He fell on his knees and folded his arms across his breast. The Angel, as if magnetized, walked straight down the aisle to him, and running her fingers into the crisp masses of his red hair, tilted his head back and laid her lips on his forehead. Then she stepped back and faced him. “Good boy!” she said, in a voice that wavered from the throbbing of her shaken heart. “Dear boy! I knew you could do it! I knew it was in you! Freckles, when you go into the world, if you can face a big audience and sing like that, just once, you will be immortal, and anything you want will be yours.” “Anything!” gasped Freckles. “Anything,” said the Angel. Freckles arose, muttered something, and catching up his old bucket, plunged into the swamp blindly on a pretence of bringing water. The Angel walked slowly across the study, sat on the rustic bench, and, through narrowed lids, intently studied the tip of her shoe. On the trail the Bird Woman wheeled to McLean with a dumbfounded look. “God!” muttered he. At last the Bird Woman spoke. “Do you think the Angel knew she did that?” she asked softly. “No,” said McLean; “I do not. But the poor boy knew it. Heaven help him!” The Bird Woman stared across the gently waving swale. “I don't see how I am going to blame her,” she said at last. “It's so exactly what I would have done myself.” “Say the remainder,” demanded McLean hoarsely. “Do him justice.” “He was born a gentleman,” conceded the Bird Woman. “He took no advantage. He never even offered to touch her. Whatever that kiss meant to him, he recognized that it was the loving impulse of a child under stress of strong emotion. He was fine and manly as any man ever could have been.” McLean lifted his hat. “Thank you,” he said simply, and parted the bushes for her to enter Freckles' room. It was her first visit. Before she left she sent for her cameras and made studies of each side of it and of the cathedral. She was entranced with the delicate beauty of the place, while her eyes kept following Freckles as if she could not believe that it could be his conception and work. That was a happy day. The Bird Woman had brought a lunch, and they spread it, with Freckles' dinner, on the study floor and sat, resting and enjoying themselves. But the Angel put her banjo into its case, silently gathered her music, and no one mentioned the concert.