When she had well begun to sing Rutledge recalled having heard that song a long time before. It had not impressed him. Elise sang simply. The fullness of her low voice and the clearness of her words, together with the unaffected "heart" in her singing, left her nothing to be desired as a singer of ballads. As Evans listened to the song of sentiment of Mrs. Hazard’s choosing he reformed his opinion of it. Always hitherto he had deemed sentiment an effervescence—refreshing at times as apollinaris, but none the less an effervescence—and the words of _My Rosary_ a fair type of it: "The hours I spent with thee, dear Heart, Are as a string of pearls to me. I count them over, every one apart, My rosary, my rosary. "Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer To still a heart in absence wrung— I tell each bead unto the end And there a cross is hung. "Oh memories that bless and burn, Oh barren gain, and bitter loss. I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, To kiss the cross." But with Elise sitting there before him, a vision of loveliness and grace entirely, appealingly feminine, "the lady" all gone, and the girl—the woman—unaffected, natural, singing of love with such an air of truth and faith: sentiment became a very real thing to Rutledge.... When she finished he was silent. To comment would have been to comment on Elise, and for her every drop of his blood was singing, "I love you, I love you." He felt that if he spoke to her he must crush her in his arms and tell her so. "That is a song according to my notion," said Lola. "No _mésalliance_ of sentiment and melody there, such as you often see. The words and the music made a love-match—they were born for each other. Who wrote it, Elise?" "I forget—if I ever knew," said Elise. "Woman, of course," Lola continued; and Rutledge interpolated "Why?" "Because a woman always mixes her religion with her love—if she has any religion. A man may have one or the other, or both, but he never confuses them." "Pardon me for taking issue with you, Mrs. Hazard; but with many a man his love for a woman is his only religion." "Which means, Mr. Rutledge, that he has love—not religion." As Rutledge turned to Mrs. Hazard Elise had the first opportunity to look at him unobserved. She saw that his face had less colour than usual, that his manner seemed to lack its accustomed spontaneity, that there was a tired look about his eyes—which provoked in her heart a fleeting maternal impulse to lay her hand upon them. She watched him furtively and became convinced that he was in some measure distressed. At first it rather amused her and flattered her vanity to think that he was approaching her with a becoming self-distrust. As she studied him longer, however, she began to doubt the reason for his constraint.