"Will you permit me to see what author engages your attention?" said Ronald Valchester; and the singer quietly laid the book in his hand. He opened it, and she smiled very faintly as she saw the sensitive color mount to his cheeks. "I presume they are your own poems, Mr. Valchester?" she said; and he shivered at the sweetness of her low voice. The rushing tide of memory poured over his soul overwhelmingly. He lifted his eyes and looked fully at the beautiful woman. "Yes, they are mine," he answered, trembling as the beautiful dark eyes met his own. As they held his glance a moment he saw how grave and sad they were, and the white brow suggested lines he had somewhere read: "How noble and calm was that forehead 'Neath its tresses of dark, waving hair; The sadness of thought slept upon it, And a look that a seraph might wear." "Ah, Mr. Valchester," she said, lightly, it seemed to him, "I told you long ago that you were a poet, and you denied it." He bent toward her eagerly, his blue-gray eyes growing bright and dark with excitement. "Then it really _is_ you, Lina?" he cried. "I thought--I believed it was so, but I was afraid to speak." His deep voice quivered with emotion. Of the two she seemed much the calmer. Only the marble pallor of her cheek showed her intense repressed agitation. "Yes, it is Lina," she said, with apparent calmness. "Are you surprised, Mr. Valchester?" "Lina, we have mourned you as dead," he said, unsteadily. "There were few to mourn me," she replied, and there was a note of bitterness in the musical voice. There was a moment's embarrassed silence. Valchester twirled the leaves of the book in his hand. Jaquelina looked at the floor. "Tell me something of the Earles--and my uncle," she said. "It is so long--three years--since I have heard." "The Earles are in New York--they came expressly to hear you sing last night," he replied. "They did not know----" she said, then paused, abruptly. "That Madam Dolores was little Lina?" he said; "no, but in the first moment when you came upon the stage we were struck by the resemblance. Violet was positively agitated, yet she refused to entertain the idea that it could really be you. You see she had always felt convinced that you were dead, or that"--he paused, and she could see the shudder that shook the strong, handsome form--"you had met a more terrible fate." "And you--did you believe in my identity?" she asked, calmly, and a little curiously. "Yes," he answered, unfalteringly. "I knew there was no other face or voice on earth like yours." "You must have been surprised?" she said. "I was," he answered. "Only think how strange it is, Lina. We who parted under such sad and terrible circumstances three years ago, to meet again in this way. To think that you of all others should be the one to bring out the opera on which I have labored so long."