His fingers itched for his violin, but he could not practise. It would not disturb Aunt Peace, but it would be considered out of keeping with the situation. The Doctor's rooms over the post-office were also impossible. He smiled at the thought of the gossip which would permeate East Lancaster if he should practise there. But at Herr Kaufmann's? His face brightened, and with characteristic impulsiveness he hastened downstairs. Doctor Brinkerhoff still stood in the hall, a little wearily, perhaps, but calmness overlaid his features like a mask. Lynn wondered at the change in him. "Mr. Irving," he said, huskily, "you were going out?" "Yes," replied Lynn, "to Herr Kaufmann's. I can do nothing here," he added, by way of apology. "No," sighed the Doctor, "no one can do anything here, but wait one moment." "Yes?" responded Lynn, with a rising inflection. "Is there some message?" "It is my message," said the Doctor, with dignity. "Say to him, please, that no provision has been made for music to-morrow, and that I would like him to come. Be sure to say that I ask it." "Very well." Lynn moved away from the house decorously, though the freedom of the outer air and the spring of the turf beneath his feet lifted the cloud from his spirits and urged him to hasten his steps. Doctor Brinkerhoff looked after him, his old eyes dim. The impassable chasm of the years lay between him and Lynn--a measureless gulf which no trick of magic might span. "If I had it to do over," said the Doctor, to himself,--"if I had my lost youth--and was not afraid,--things would not be as they are now." Margaret saw him from her upper window, and something tightened round her heart, as though some iron hand held it unpityingly. Then came a great throb of relief, because it was Aunt Peace, instead of Lynn. Iris, too, had seen him as he left the house. She perceived that he was eager to get away--that only a sense of the fitness of things kept him from running and whistling as was his wont. From the first, she had known that it was nothing to him. "He has no heart," she said to herself. "He is as cold as--as cold as Aunt Peace is now." Slow torture held the girl in a remorseless gird. Dimly, she knew that some day there would be a change--that it could not always be like this. Sometime it must ease, and each throb would be sensibly less of a hurt--just a little easier to bear. With rare prescience, also, she knew that nothing in the world would ever be the same again--that she had come to the dividing line. One reaches it as a light-hearted child; one crosses it--a woman.