“It was sometimes hard work to keep it from you when we were abroad, and especially when I received the letter you wrote to your unknown friend, and which came to me on the ship which brought you. In it you said, “if there is one thing more than another which you desire, I hope God will give it to you,” and he has given me _you_—my heart’s desire—and I am more than repaid. I thought you would like your old home, and meant to give it to you. We have another house in Washington, you know. My mother and Miss Percy like it, and we will spend our winters there and our summers here, if it pleases you.” “Pleases me! Oh, Fred, everything pleases me, and I am so happy that I can scarcely breathe,” Louie said, clutching at her throat as if for breath. The high collar choked her, and she tore it off. “There!” she said, at last, with a long gasp, “something which closed up in Paris has given way. I began to feel it when the people at the station cheered so loud. I believe I can sing again.” She did not wait for Fred to reply, but, standing up, began a song in which she had failed in Paris, her voice rising louder and clearer, and striking the higher notes without a quiver. Then a few bars of the bird song rang out on the air, and was answered by the faint twitter of a robin roused from its first sleep, and thinking, perhaps, that its mate was calling it. “My voice has come back. I might have sung on the stage and paid my debts myself,” she cried, in an ecstasy of joy, while the moonlight fell around her like a halo, making her face seem to Fred like the face of an angel. He watched her till her transport of joy subsided. Then, drawing her down beside him, he said: “Louie, which would you rather be, a star before the footlights or my wife, plain Mrs. Fred Lansing?” Just what Louie’s answer was only the night wind heard, or the robin, if she was still awake; but Fred was satisfied. THE END ------------------------------------------------------------------------ POPULAR NOVELS BY MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.