Wilder the tumult grew, till out of his fine despair The thought of the beggar rose, and the song he had sung in the square. Raising his hand, he smiled, and a silence filled the place, While he sang that simple air, with the love-light on his face. Wet were the singer's cheeks when the last note died away— A ONE WAY OF LOVE. ROBERT BROWNING. LL June I bound the rose in sheaves; Let them lie. Suppose they die! The chance was they might take her eye. How many months I strove to suit She will not hear my music? So! My whole life long I learned to love. Lose who may, I still can say, 'Tis well! Those who win heaven, blest are they! IT THE TENOR. H. C. BUNNER. T was a dim, quiet room in an old-fashioned New York house. The door opened, and two pretty girls came in, one in hat and furs, the other in a modest house dress. The girl in the furs was fair, with a bright color in her cheeks, and an eager, intent look in her clear brown eyes. The other girl was dark-eyed and dark-haired, dreamy, with a soft, warm dusky color in her face. They were two very pretty girls indeed-or, rather, two girls about to be very pretty, for neither one was eighteen years old. The dark girl glanced at a little porcelain clock. "You are in time, dear," she said, and helped her companion to take off her wraps. Then the two girls crossed the room, and, with a caressing and almost a reverent touch, the dark girl opened the doors of a little carven cabinet that hung upon the wall, above a small table covered with a delicate white cloth. In its depths, framed in a mat of odorous double violets, stood the photograph of a face of a handsome man of forty-a face crowned with clustering black locks, from beneath which a pair of large, mournful eyes looked out with something like religious fervor in their rapt gaze. It was the face of a foreigner. "Oh, Esther! how beautifully you have dressed him to-day!" "I wanted to get more, but I've spent almost all my allowance— and violets do cost so shockingly. Come now," with another glance at the clock, "don't let's lose any more time, Louise dear." She brought a couple of tiny candles in Sèvres candlesticks, and two little silver saucers, in which she lit fragrant pastilles. As the pale gray smoke rose, floating in faint wreaths and spirals before the enshrined photograph, Louise sat down and gazed intently upon the little altar. Esther went to her piano and watched the clock. It struck two. Her hands fell softly on the keys, and, studying a printed program in front of her, she began to play an overture. After the overture she played one or two pieces of the regular toncert stock. Then she paused. "I can't play the Tschaikowski piece." "Never mind. Let us wait for him in silence." The hands of the clock pointed to 2:29. Each girl drew a quick breath, and then the one at the piano began to sing softly, almost inaudibly, "Les Rameaux" in a transcription for tenor of Faure's great song. When it was ended, she played and sang the encore. Then, with her fingers touching the keys so softly that they awakened only an echo-like sound, she ran over the numbers that intervened between the first tenor solo and the second. Then she sang again, as softly as before. The fair-haired girl sat by the little table, gazing intently on the picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was something absent-minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not speak until Esther played the last number on the program. "He had three encores for that last Saturday," she said, and Esther played the three encores. Then they closed the piano and the little cabinet, and exchanged an innocent girlish kiss, and Louise went out, and found her father's coupé waiting for her, and was driven away to her great, gloomy, brown-stone home near Central Park. It happened to be a French tenor whom they were worshipping. It might as well have been anybody or anything else. They were both at that period of girlish growth when the young female bosom is torn by a hysterical craving to worship something—anything. They had been studying music, and they had selected the tenor who was the sensation of the hour in New York for their idol. They had heard him only on the concert stage; they were never likely to see him nearer. On the following Monday, Esther Van Guilder returned her friend's call, in response to an urgent invitation, despatched by mail. Esther found Louise in a state of almost feverish excitement. Her eyes shone, the color burned high on her clear cheeks. "You never would guess what I've done, dear!" she began, as soon as they were alone in the big room. "I'm going to see him— to speak to him-Esther!" Her voice was solemnly hushed, “to serve him!" "Oh, Louise! what do you mean?" "To serve him-with my own hands! To-to-help him on with his coat I don't know-to do something that a servant does -anything, so that I can say that once, once only, just for an hour, I have been near him, been of use to him, served him in one little thing, as loyally as he serves OUR ART." Music was their art, and no capitals could tell how much it was theirs or how much of an art it was. "Louise, are you crazy?" "No. Read this!" She handed the other girl a clipping from the advertising columns of a newspaper: HAMBERMAID AND WAITRESS.-WANTED, A NEAT and willing girl, for light work. Apply to Mme. Rémy, The Midlothian,. .Broadway. "I saw it just by accident, Saturday, after I left you. Papa had left his paper in the coupé. I was going up to my First Aid to the Injured Class-it's at four o'clock now, you know. I made up my mind right off-it came to me like an inspiration. I just waited until it came to the place where they showed how to tie up arteries, and then I slipped out. Lots of the girls slip out in the horrid parts, you know. And then, instead of waiting in the anteroom, I put on my wrap, and pulled the hood over my head and ran off to the Midlothian-it's just around the corner, you know. And I saw his wife." "Oh, I don't know. Sort of horrid-actressy. She had a pink silk wrapper with swansdown all over it-at four o'clock, think! I was awfully frightened when I got there; but it wasn't the least trouble. She hardly looked at me, and she engaged me right off. She just asked me if I was willing to do a whole lot of things-I forget what they were-and where I'd worked before. I said at Mrs. Barcalow's." "Mrs. Barcalow's?" "Why, yes-my Aunt Amanda, don't you know-up in Framingham. I always haye to wash the teacups when I go there. Aunty says that everybody has got to do something in her house." "Oh, Louise! how can you think of such things?" "Well, I did. And she-his wife, you know-just said: 'Oh, I suppose you'll do as well as any one-all you girls are alike.” "But did she really take you for a-servant?" "Why, yes, indeed. It was raining. I had that old ulster on, you know. I'm to go at twelve o'clock next Saturday." "But, Louise! you don't truly mean to go!" you what my Now, listen, dear. Don't say a word till I tell plan is. I've thought it all out, and you've got to help me." Esther shuddered. "You foolish child!" cried Louise. Her eyes were sparkling; she was in a state of ecstatic excitement; she could see no obstacles to the carrying out of her plan. "You don't think I mean to stay there, do you? I'm just going at twelve o'clock, and at four he comes back from the matinée, and at five o'clock I'm going to slip on my things and run downstairs, and have you waiting for me in the coupé, and off we go. Now, do you see?" 66 'Oh, child, it's you, is it?" was Mme. Rémy's greeting at twelve o'clock on Saturday. "Well, you're punctual and you look clean. Now, are you going to break my dishes or are you going to steal my rings? Well, we'll find out soon enough. Go up to the servants' quarters—right at the top of those stairs there. Ask for the room that belongs to apartment II. You are to room with their girl." Louise was glad of a moment's respite. She had taken the plunge; she was determined to go through to the end. But her heart would beat and her hands would tremble. She climbed up |