"Yes--that song. I must hear it again. You must not think I am growing daft, but that song has haunted me all day in the strangest way. There is something in the way _you_ sing it--the words and your voice together--that recall some association too faint for me to grasp. I can neither remember what it is, nor forget it. I have tried to get it out of my mind, but I have an odd impression that I would better cherish it--that it is important to me--that life or death are not more important. There! I have confessed all my weakness to you, and now you will say that I need a few weeks of salt breeze." "I will sing you the song first. Perhaps we may pluck out its mystery." She preluded a moment and sang, while Farnham waited with a strained sense of expectancy, as if something unspeakably serious was impending. She sang with far more force and feeling than the night before. Her heart was full of her happy love, as yet unspoken, and her fancy was pleased with that thought that, under the safe cover of her music, she could declare her love without restraint. She sang with the innocent rapture of a mavis in spring, in notes as rich and ardent as her own maiden dreams. Farnham listened with a pleasure so keen that it bordered upon pain. When she came to the line, "I would be so tender, so loving, Douglas," he started and leaned forward in his chair, holding his hands to his temples, and cried, "Can't you help me to think what that reminds me of?" Alice rose from the piano, flushing a pink as sweet and delicate as that of the roses in her belt. She came forward a few paces and then stopped, bent slightly toward him, with folded hands. In her long, white, clinging drapery, with her gold hair making the dim room bright, with her red lips parted in a tender but solemn smile, with something like a halo about her of youth and purity and ardor, she was a sight so beautiful that Arthur Farnham as he gazed up at her felt his heart grow heavy with an aching consciousness of her perfection that seemed to remove her forever from his reach. But the thought that was setting her pulses to beating was as sweetly human as that of any bride since Eve. She was saying to herself in the instant she stood motionless before him, looking like a pictured angel, "I know now what he means. He loves me. I am sure of him. I have a right to give myself to him." She held out her hands. He sprang up and seized them. "Come," she said, "I know what you are trying to remember, and I will make you remember it." He was not greatly surprised, for love is a dream, and dreams have their own probabilities. She led him to a sofa and seated him beside her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed his head to her beating heart, and said in a voice as soft as a mother's to an ailing child, "My beloved, if you will live, I will be so good to you." She kissed him and said gently, "Now do you remember?" THE END. * * * * * * Harper's Popular 12mo series