Miss Thane looked at Bergan, but he said nothing. If he had added a word to Coralie's entreaty, the chances are that she would not have sung. But since she had only Coralie to oblige--Coralie, who alone seemed to have found the deep way to her heart, and to whom she rarely refused anything--she went straight to the piano, took the first music that presented itself, which happened to be Rossini's "Cujus Animam," and began to sing, not only with perfect method--that might have been expected--but with exquisite feeling. Her voice was a rich contralto, deep and broad as a river flowing to the sea, and bearing the listener whither it pleased. There were tears in the eyes of her auditors, when she had finished, and would have been, doubtless, had she sung anything else, for the quality of her voice touched that point of perfection, which, in this world, gives a pleasure closely akin to pain. She waited a moment, but no one spoke; then she put her fingers again on the keys, and, looking far out into the evening dusk, sang a dismal, hopeless dirge, which Bergan felt intuitively to be her own; and which wrung his heart with passionate longing and pain. She would sing no more. Yet no one could talk after those heartbreaking strains. So Bergan quietly took his leave. Coralie wound her arm round her friend's waist, and drew her to the window, to watch him down the street. "What do you think of him?" she asked. "I think--that he has a genius for conversation," replied Miss Thane, coolly. "Oh, Diva, you know that is not what I mean! How do you like him?" "I like no one--but you. I think I might respect him in time. As for you, little one, take care you do not like him too well." "Why?" asked Coralie, blushing. "Because he has buried his heart--the best part of it--in somebody's grave." III. FARVIEW. Diva Thane, it is perhaps needless to say, was a child of the North. Her peculiar type of beauty blossoms only out of soil, which, for half the year, withdraws its warmth into its deep heart, and wraps itself in a chill, white robe of snow. She had made her appearance in Savalla, about a twelvemonth before, unheralded and unknown, had rented the parlor of a decayed aristocratic mansion as a studio, and had tacked on the door a card signifying to the public that she was a painter in oils. She had thenceforth been an example of that freedom and independence of life which Art makes possible for its votaries, of either sex, as a compensation, in some sort, for the sacrifices that they are bound to make to her.