melodies being poured over her. Since everything in her life and imagination had hitherto centred about music, she had first to translate pictures and thoughts into the world of sound, before her perceptions could grasp them.

She turned pale, and sat there squeezing her handkerchief in her left hand. Her eyes staring at him clouded over with moisture in the joy of surmise. She saw his breast working, saw the drops of perspiration on his forehead, saw the flames burning on his cheeks; she wanted to weep, to laugh, she wanted to cry: "Stop!" But she might not. So she sat motionless, and listened to the poor suppressed voice proclaiming the evangel of that old time which is still new. She listened also to another voice which cried jubilantly deep down in her heart: "Let there be——!"

"But how does the world look," he continued, "in which that high-keyed life developed? Like Moses, I have viewed it only from the mountain. I have loitered a little in its outer courts, but I have seen enough for me to know that my soul will never cease to desire it while breath remains in my body. There between cypresses and evergreen oaks, temples and palaces sprang up in white glory from the soil, seeming like a part of it. What is clay here is marble there; what is routine here is free creative energy there; our feeble imitation there is spontaneous growth. Here laborious, grafted culture, there the grace of a happy nature; here poverty-stricken pursuit of the useful, there voluptuous passion for the beautiful; here sober, subtly reasoning Protestantism, there glad, naïve, Catholic paganism."

This came to Lilly like a blow on the head. She had been raised by Catholic parents in a Protestant country. Though there had been little place for piety in her home, a great deal of religious enthusiasm dwelt in her soul, fostered by an imaginative faculty and a compelling emotionalism. To hear her Catholicism praised did her heart good, but why it should be linked, almost as a matter of course, with the wicked heathens, whom she had been taught to despise and deplore, was a riddle to her. Her mind was a whirl of anxious thoughts and queries. She was unable to follow the speaker any longer, and lost the thread of his discourse, until after a while she heard him, in soft caressing words, give a picture of the southern country.

She saw the golden-blue summer sky rising over the isles of the blessed, she saw the sun's bloody disk dip into the sea blackened by the breath of the sirocco, saw the shepherd with his flute of Pan pasturing his long-haired goats on the shining meadows of asphodel, saw the evergreen forest clambering up the slopes of the Apennines to their snow-clad peaks. She breathed in the fragrance of the laurels and strawberries and inhaled the olive vapours, which, at the sounding of the Angelus, ascended heavenward in blue pillars, like the offerings of a prayer.

When she glanced up again, she almost started back in fright. A consuming, tortured look of yearning shot from his eyes as they stared with clairvoyant gaze, past them all, into emptiness.

The bell rang, the hour was over. He looked around like a somnambulist roused from sleep, snatched up his hat, and rushed from the room. Sacred silence remained. After a while the tension was broken by a whisper here and there and by a shy fumbling for school-bags.

Lilly spoke to no one, and managed to make her escape into the street alone. Humming and weeping softly she walked home.

The next morning there was profound excitement in the Selecta. The waves set in motion by the great event of the day before continued to vibrate.

Anna Marholz, the daughter of a physician, who was a member of the Board of Health, brought some facts about the young instructor's life. It was absolutely necessary, she reported, for Dr. Mälzer to go to the south. If he remained at home, he would probably not survive the winter.

Lilly's heart stood still. The others considered ways and means of helping him. Since he lacked the money and since the city would not assume the cost of so long a leave of absence, especially as his position was not yet assured, the means for saving him would have to be obtained privately.

"Let's form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded enthusiastically.

"Thank God," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been prolonged by forty or fifty years.

At the ten o'clock recess they lost no time in getting together for urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of secretary.

A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein's confectionery shop—they did not venture into Frangipani's, the resort of military officers and city officials—in the course of which fifteen young ladies consumed fifteen small meringues glacés and fifteen cups of chocolate, business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with assigned rôles be given in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever found his way into girls' hearts.

Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys' high school quartette, proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.

Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens. This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three projects into execution.

Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went pit-a-pat, "For him!"

The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues glacés and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Mälzer's subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with serious obstacles.

The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission to coöperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared apply for it.

Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating in a confectioner's bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly's share. Lilly well knew the way to the pawnbroker's, and she did not have to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was all for his sake.

Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it furtively.

One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art would be discontinued until further notice.

Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.

Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.

"He's dying, he's dying!" was the cry in her soul.

After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in one of her father's books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain. But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours, despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for having robbed her toiling mother of