Then why, my dear young lady, should your cheeks flutter _now_ between white and pink, like a Marie Vornhoot rose, beneath the most attractive and healthy brown with which sun and sea have decorated you? And why, with even greater emphasis, should you have been warbling to yourself _then_ the love-sick outpourings of the Seville gallant to his Rosina? I thought those old operas were, if not dead, for they are immortal, at least buried alive beneath a mound of Gaiety muslin and the striped cotton habiliments of many musical comedy coons. “Girls get such whimsies in their heads that they often do not know what they are thinking about,” replied practical Mrs. Hutchinson. “Yet there can be no doubt, my dear, that something extraordinary did occur.” “When I woke up,” she continued, addressing Karl and me, “I found Maggie crying softly to herself. Naturally I was alarmed, and when she did not answer I caught her arm. Then she appeared to recover her wits, but she frightened me even more thoroughly by murmuring something about the utter bliss--” “Mother!” broke in the girl, evidently nerving herself for an ordeal, though her face was aflame, “let me describe what happened.” “Well, well!” said Mrs. Hutchinson, “tell it your own way. I admit I never got the hang of it to rights.” It was impossible to watch both Karl’s face and Maggie’s, so I devoted myself to an intent study of the subtle emotions which sent their undecipherable shadows across the girl’s eyes. But the woman does not breathe, or is not worthy of breath, who cannot be an actress when the great crises of existence throb across life’s stage. Indeed, she controlled her expression and chose her words so well that she soon led my rambling fancy back to the sufficiently bewildering climax of her own adventure. “Mother has left out what you might call a predisposing influence,” she said, smiling, and she spoke to me, not to Karl. “Have you ever heard of the agonic line?” “Has it anything to do with the ‘Personal’ column in the _Times_?” was my banal reply. “No!” It was Karl who answered, and there was a timbre in his voice I had not heard before. It silenced Maggie for the moment. Perhaps it suggested a chord drawn with nerve-thrilling effect from her own beloved violin. Anyhow, he took up the parable. “An agonic line is an irregular line, running generally north and south, which marks those parts of the earth’s surface where the magnetic needle points to the true north. There are three of them, and they are slowly changing their positions,” he said.