The door opened, and two pretty girls came in, one in hat and furs, the other in a modest house–dress. The girl in the furs, who had been afraid that she would be late, was fair, with a bright color in her cheeks, and an eager, intent look in her clear brown eyes. The other girl was dark–eyed and dark–haired, dreamy, with a soft, warm, dusky color in her face. They were two very pretty girls indeed—or, rather, two girls about to be very pretty, for neither one was eighteen years old. The dark girl glanced at a little porcelain clock. “You are in time, dear,” she said, and helped her companion to take off her wraps. Then the two girls crossed the room, and with a caressing and almost a reverent touch, the dark girl opened the doors of a little carven cabinet that hung upon the wall, above a small table covered with a delicate white cloth. In its depths, framed in a mat of odorous double violets, stood the photograph of the face of a handsome man of forty—a face crowned with clustering black locks, from beneath which a pair of large, mournful eyes looked out with something like religious fervor in their rapt gaze. It was the face of a foreigner. [Illustration] “O Esther!” cried the other girl, “how beautifully you have dressed him to–day!” “I wanted to get more,” Esther said; “but I’ve spent almost all my allowance—and violets do cost so shockingly. Come, now—” with another glance at the clock—“don’t let’s lose any more time, Louise dear.” She brought a couple of tiny candles in Sèvres candlesticks, and two little silver saucers, in which she lit fragrant pastilles. As the pale gray smoke arose, floating in faint wreaths and spirals before the enshrined photograph, Louise sat down and gazed intently upon the little altar. Esther went to her piano and watched the clock. It struck two. Her hands fell softly on the keys, and, studying a printed programme in front of her, she began to play an overture. After the overture she played one or two pieces of the regular concert stock. Then she paused. “I can’t play the Tschaikowski piece.” “Never mind,” said the other. “Let us wait for him in silence.” The hands of the clock pointed to 2:29. Each girl drew a quick breath, and then the one at the piano began to sing softly, almost inaudibly, “les Rameaux” in a transcription for tenor of Faure’s great song. When it was ended, she played and sang the _encore_. Then, with her fingers touching the keys so softly that they awakened only an echo–like sound, she ran over the numbers that intervened between the first tenor solo and the second. Then she sang again, as softly as before. The fair–haired girl sat by the little table, gazing intently on the picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was something absent–minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not speak until Esther played the last number on the programme. “He had three encores for that last Saturday,” she said, and Esther played the three encores.