Mark glanced from the picture of the child to the face of the woman whose youth was past. Was it tragedy for her, he wondered, that she had never known in its fullness the meaning of love and home? Or was she happy burning with her own diffusing light full of the warmth of humanity, loving, and giving to all the world instead of one lover? Miss Lucretia interrupted his reverie. "I suppose you are going over to see Stella this evening, and we old people shall have to amuse ourselves without you as best we can." Mark lifted his Lowestoft tea-cup and set it down again before he answered slowly: "No, I think not. I am going to stay and have some music with Miss Allison." He wondered why Miss Allison had made Stella seem suddenly hard, new, almost crude, like the modern furniture in the drawing-room beside the fine old mahogany, with its simple decoration and tone of time. It was that evening, which he had decided should be his last, that, when their music was over, he handed Miss Allison Clyde a sheet of manuscript music. "Since you liked it," he said. She took it, a faint color coming in her cheek. It was the manuscript of the fifth song of his cycle, "Evening," and he had dedicated it to her. Involuntarily she moved to give it back to him. "No, not to me. You are too kind. But you must dedicate it to youth." He nodded, with his smile. "So I have: to the woman who has youth in her heart." Then he drew out the package of letters. "And these," he said in a lower voice, "are yours also." He handed them to her silently. "Mine?" She turned over the package in doubtful wonder. "I found them in the desk with the daguerreotype. When you open them you will understand." Turning from the doorway for a last good night, Mark saw Miss Allison, as he always afterward remembered her, standing by the tall mantel in the candle-light with the unopened package of Uncle William's letters in her hand. ZELIG[17] BY BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT From _The Bellman_ [17] Copyright, 1915, by The Bellman Company. Copyright, 1916, by Benjamin Rosenblatt. Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent--"Mr." "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join "A Society for Burying Its Members," to be provided at least with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a member of one of these. "Alone, like a stone," his wife often sighed.