He had had some difficulty in obtaining, quickly, an official permit to repair to Ellis Island, but an opened pocketbook had solved it, in due course of time, and, now, here he was, trying to "frame up," as he expressed it to himself, "some really fair reason for having followed these whom he was seeking."

The excitement of poor M'riar's sad predicament made it unnecessary for him to present the reason which he had, with careful pains at length devised. Kind Fate had wondrously well timed his eager coming.

"What seems to be the trouble?" he asked easily, as he hurried forward with his hat in hand, much comforted by seeing that there was a trouble of some sort.

The matter was explained to him.

"That's easy," he said gaily. "Let me fix it;" and, forthwith, the thing was fixed. Without the slightest hesitation he made himself responsible for M'riar in every way which an ingenious government had managed to devise through years of effort.

The gratitude of the three travelers was earnest and was volubly expressed in spite of his determined efforts to prevent them from expressing it. M'riar would have thrown her arms about his neck and kissed him had not Anna thoughtfully prevented it, after one quick glance at the astonishing appearance of the delighted child's tear-and lunch-stained face.

And so it came about that the Herr Kreutzer and his daughter Anna, with her humble slave and worshiper, M'riar, were ferried back from Ellis Island to New York within a half-a-dozen hours of the moment when they landed on it. As they went Moresco, himself, apparently a citizen, and free to go at once, was still there in the building, working with his boasted "pull" to help his countrymen. He shook his fist at them as they departed and cried insults after them. Few immigrants have ever been passed through in briefer time than was the flute-player; few government inspectors at the landing station have ever been enabled, by a stroke of good luck from a cloudless sky, to take home to their wives, at night, as large a roll of crisp, new money (yellow-backed) as an inspector took home to his wife that night.

"Gee, Bill!" the wife exclaimed when she had finished choking. "When do you expect the cops?"

"What cops?" he naturally asked.

"Them that'll come to pinch you for bank-robbery," she answered, fondling the certificates with reverent, delighted fingers.

An episode of their return from Ellis Island to Manhattan much puzzled Vanderlyn. Puffing and blowing from his hurry (which had been less adroit than Vanderlyn's) they met Karrosch on the New York pier, about to start in search of Kreutzer.

"Ah," he said cordially, "I wish to talk with you. I have the largest orchestra in all America and wish to offer you the place of my first flute. You are very lucky to have had me on the ship with you. I shall be glad to pay—"

Kreutzer interrupted him with courteous shaking of the head. "I thank you, sir," he said, with firm decision. "I cannot play first flute in your large orchestra."

"But," said the astonished Karrosch, "I will pay—"

"I much regret," said Kreutzer, "that I cannot play first flute in your large orchestra."

Vanderlyn, not less than Karrosch, was bewildered by this episode. Only Anna was not in the least surprised by it, although she did not understand it. She knew that he had many times refused alluring offers of the sort in London, always without an explanation of his reasons for so doing.

In the little rooms which they had found for temporary lodging place, Herr Kreutzer sat that evening, with a well-cleaned M'riar standing by and trying to devise some way of adding to his comfort. He had never given much thought to the child, before, he realized; he had accepted her as one of many facts of small importance. Now, though, he noted the devoted gaze with which her eyes were following Anna as she moved about the room, arranging little things.

"You love her, eh?" he asked.

"Love 'er!" said M'riar, breathlessly. "My heye! Love 'er! Ou, Hi, sye!"

Herr Kreutzer reached an arm out with a thrill of real affection and drew the little waif close to him. Never in her life had she been offered a caress, before, by anyone but Anna. It took her by surprise, and, without the slightest thought of doing so, she burst into a flood of tears. He did not fail to understand the workings of her soul. He drew the tiny creature to him and softly pressed a kiss upon her perfectly clean forehead.

"You vould not want to leave her, M'riar?"

"Hi'd die, Hi would," sobbed M'riar.

Herr Kreutzer held her head back and smiled into her eyes with a good smile which made her very happy. "Ach, liebling, do not worry."

"W'y wouldn't yer go with the toff and pl'y in ther big horchestra?" she made bold to ask. "You'd set 'em cryzy, you would! My 'art turns somersets, it does, w'en you pl'ys on yer flute."

He pushed the child away, almost as if she angered him; then, seeing her remorseful, frightened look, he took her back again and held her close beside his knee.

"I have no love for crowds, my M'riar," he said slowly. "No; not even in America. I have no love for crowds."



CHAPTER IV

Herr Kreutzer's little stock of money (depleted sadly by dishonest exchange) sagged heavily in a small leather bag which he carried in a carefully buttoned hip-pocket in his trousers. There it gave him comfort, as, the day after he had landed in New York, it chinked and thumped against him as he walked. There was so much of it! In this land of gold and generous appreciation of ability, it would be far more than enough to carry him and the two girls who were now dependent on him until he should find a well paid, but not too conspicuous, situation. He was sure of this. It had been the gossip of the little orchestra in London that musicians, in New York, if worthy, were always in demand; that when they played they were paid vastly. Tales often had been told of money literally thrown to players by delighted members of appreciative audiences—money in great rolls of bank-notes, heavy gold-pieces, bank checks. Nowhere in the world, not even in the music loving Fatherland, a wandering trombonist who had visited the states had solemnly assured him, were expert performers on any sort of instrument so well paid and so well beloved as in the city of New York.

"You, Kreutzer," this man had said (for when musicians lie the cultivated and exotic fancy, essential to success in their profession, makes them lie superbly) "could, past the shadow of a doubt, win a real fortune in a season in New York."

"Much work is waiting, eh?" said Kreutzer, eagerly. He did not wish to win a fortune, for that would mean the larger orchestras, but he wondered if the smaller organizations paid proportionally well.

"For such as you," the man replied, maliciously—he was a disappointed, vicious person—"there ever is demand from large and small."

"Why, then, did you come back to England?" the flute-player inquired.

"I? Oh, I am not an artist—a real artist, as you are," was the answer, flattering and vicious. The man had tried to get an introduction to fair Anna and had been refused peremptorily, as all had been refused. He planned to have revenge for it. "The man who merely plays is not so vastly better off, there in the states, than here; but to the artist—to the real artist, such as you—the states will literally pay anything."

That the man who had found failure was not a real musician Kreutzer knew. Too often had his trombone trespassed, with its brazen bray, upon the time which the composer had allotted to the soft, delightful flute, to leave the slightest doubt of its performer's rank incompetence. That he had failed was, therefore, easily understood; in no way did it indicate that all he said about the chances of a real musician in the land of skyscrapers and mighty distances (which he also told about at length) was of necessity untrue. It had been the talk of this man which had fascinated Kreutzer; it was the city of this man's wild fancy which the flute-player expected to encounter when he reached New York.

The disillusionment came slowly at the start. Certainly the skyscrapers were existent in a number and a grandeur which the man had not been able to exaggerate; certainly the railway trains ran up and down on iron stilts as he had said they did; certainly the crowds were mighty and amazing both in their brutality and their good nature, just as he had said they were. Many things there were which, for a time, preserved the innocent flute-player's faith in his informant. But when he came to look for work—ah, then vanished the first bubble. Seemingly there was no place in all the city for an old performer on the flute save that which Karrosch offered and which Kreutzer would not take.

Even in this new land, far from those he would avoid, the old flute-player was determined not to go to the great orchestras, among whose auditors were likely to be travelers. Thus he barred himself from opera-houses, theatres and most of the hotels, by the towering barrier of his own timidity. Nor did he wish to join a union (this shut him out from many smaller orchestras) or even to enroll himself at the employment agencies. He would not risk unwelcome prominence even to that slight extent. Instead of doing these things, which would at once have won him profitable work, he tramped the streets, looking for various employment, at first with a resilient hope, then with a careful industry, at the end of the first month with dogged determination, finally with a desperation bordering upon despair.

And there were other things to worry him. Early in his search for work he had made a noontime pause, one day, in a quaint lager-beer saloon much frequented by musicians. There, at the table where he sat, he had encountered one who earnestly announced himself as a "wise guy" and told him much about New York, all quite as pessimistic as the London romancer's talk had been enthusiastic. He suffered from misfortune which he blamed, unhesitatingly, to the vileness of the prosperous and ranted endlessly without attracting much attention till he touched upon the subject of the viciousness of the American rich man with women. This roused Kreutzer fully, for one of the tales the babbler told was of a gilded youth who had befriended poverty in order to obtain the confidence of lowly beauty and then, of course, abused the confidence.

Herr Kreutzer's heart beat madly before the man had finished speaking. Could it be possible that all Americans were of this ilk, as the disgruntled one maintained? If so, then Vanderlyn—ah, it could not be possible! The youth had been too kind to them during the few days of his stay in New York city, before he had departed for the west on a short trip; had promised too much kindness to be offered upon his return! But—Anna!

And so, that very night, he searched until he found another tenement, and, with his own hands, moved their scanty household goods to it, leaving behind him no address. Naturally a sweet and unsuspicious soul, he had never dreamed of treachery upon the part of the ingratiating youth; now suspicion's seeds were sown in his old mind and fertilized by rising tears of disillusionment in most things which he had found in New York, he was ready to be doubtful of the most undoubtable.

The new quarters were much less desirable, in every way, than those they had abandoned, and the rent was higher; but they were quite the best the old man could discover on short notice, and quite the lowest priced. He never dreamed, as he argued with his new landlord over rent that the old rental had been cut almost in half to him because young Vanderlyn had made arrangements surreptitiously. He entered the new tenement with the firm conviction that he had been swindled in the rent which he had paid, "cash in advance," and, that night, was very gloomy.

So, also, were the bewildered Anna and M'riar.

"Hi sye, Miss," said M'riar, when they were alone, while the flute-player went out for the supper, "wot'll that young toff think, comin' back an' findin' yer gone orf from there?"

"Surely there was left behind the address of this place," said Anna, with small confidence of this in her own heart.

"Hi 'eard the lawst word said," said M'riar, with conviction, "an' hall yer farther told th' geezer was that 'e was goin' to quit."

"But, he would not possibly be so lacking in his courtesy! He—"

Just then the flute-player returned and Anna asked him, boldly, but with a studied air of carelessness, about the matter. It was the first time in her whole life that she had ever tried to hide her real emotions from her father.

"Leave our address for Herr Vanderlyn?" said Kreutzer, who had been waiting for the question and had schooled himself to answer it without revealing the real facts. "Of course. Of course. Why not?" It was the first time he had ever actually lied to Anna. Things, thus, were in a bad way at the start in the new quarters.

M'riar, after the first day there, did the marketing. The streets, transformed into deep, narrow canons by the towering buildings bordering them, swarming with the poor of every nationality on earth, every block made into a most fascinating market by the push-cart vendors with their varied wares, had, from the start, enthralled her. She was uncannily acute at bargaining. Soon more than one red-headed Jew had learned, in self-defense, to take out the stick which held up one end of his cart, and move along, at sight of her. Too often she had been the symbol of financial loss. Her "Hi sye!" and "My heye!" became the keen delight of German maidens back of counters over which cheap delicatessen was distributed.

Beyond a doubt M'riar was in her element. She labored day and night. Few tasks there were about the tiny three-room menage, save the actual cooking, which she did not undertake and undertake with energy which made up, largely, for her lack of skill. Herr Kreutzer, who had been in doubt about the wisdom of engrafting her upon his little family looked at her with amazement, sometimes lowering his flute, on which he might be practicing, in the very middle of a bar, so that he might better stare at her unbounded and unceasing physical activities. She abandoned, as unworthy of her mistress, her old form of address and no longer simply called her "Miss," but "Frow-line," after tutelage from the small shop-woman who sold cheese to her in three-cent packages.

But, ere much time had passed, the day arrived when Herr Kreutzer feared to have her even buy so much of luxury as cheese in three-cent packages. The little bag of money which had chinked so bravely on his hip when he had first arrived in New York city scarcely chinked at all, these days. Everything was so expensive in this new land they had come to! Not only must he pay as much rent for a three-room tenement, with one room almost dark and one quite windowless, as he had had to pay, in London, for the comfortable floor which they had occupied in Soho, but food cost twice as much, he woefully declared—and played the "Miserere" on his flute. He would not go to Karrosch, or any of the large, important orchestras; none of the small ones wished a flutist. He learned to loathe the mere word "phonograph"—in so many places did it form a clock-work substitute to do the work he longed to do.

It was when want actually stared them in the face that he read an advertisement in a German newspaper for a musician—flute or clarinet—in a beer garden. The clock-hands had not yet reached eight when he presented himself at the address, far uptown. He had been unsuccessful, once or twice, in getting hearings because he had arrived too late—these days he rose by four and had a paper fresh and damp from the great presses, and every advertisement in it read by five o'clock.

There were many applicants for the position, and by ten o'clock when a youth with a red face and a hoarse voice appeared behind the wicket at the side of the main entrance, peered out curiously at the shabby, anxious crowd and winked derisively before he let the door swing inwards, Herr Kreutzer was as weary as he well could be and keep upright upon his feet; but, notwithstanding this, he had not given ground and still held first place in the line. He had arrived at a decision which filled his soul with dread. If he failed to get this place he would apply to one of the great orchestras! This possibility he thought of with a desperate dismay, for, playing thus before the prosperous public, some traveler would be sure to see him, recognize him, send word back to Germany and then—ah, then the deluge! He had been sadly disappointed when he had discovered that New York is not remote from Europe, but as cosmopolitan, almost, as London. Here, as there, asylum only could be found in the remote resorts, unfrequented by those with means, by travelers, by those who know good music. Ah! he shuddered at the thought of what might happen if, some night, forgetting his surroundings, he should play as he could play in hearing of a connoisseur. Then, certainly, discovery.

So he was very anxious to obtain this small position in the little, far beer-garden. He was sorry for the others, but they could not have necessities the least bit greater than his own. He must not yield to them, so, in the eager crowd, he pushed and scrambled as the others did, and always kept in front.

"What kin yer play?" the fat and blear-eyed manager asked gruffly.

"I play the flute."

"Bring it along?"

"Yah; surely."

"Let 'er go, then. Give us something good and lively."

With nervous hands Herr Kreutzer raised the old flute to his lips, with fingers which put tremolos where none were written in the score; but he made many of the notes dance joyously. Through anxious lips he blew his soul into the instrument—his love of the pre-eminent composer who had sung the song he played, his love of his sweet daughter for whose sake he played—his love of her and fear for her if he should fail to win the favor of his burly listener. The great "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn has never been played on a flute as Kreutzer played it, in the grey light of that morning in the cheerless, bare beer-garden. When he had finished there was silence in the crowd behind him. Not a man among the applicants for the position was a real musician, but all knew, instinctively, that they had been listening to a veritable artist. Then, after an awed moment, there came a little spatter of applause. All these men were seeking for a chance to earn the mere necessities of life; every one of them was more than anxious, was pitifully eager for the small position which was open; but, having heard Herr Kreutzer play, they hoped no longer—and were generous.

The owner of the beer-garden looked on them in surprise.

"Got it all framed up," he said, "that Dutchy is to have the job, have you?" He turned, then, to Kreutzer. "That's all right, too, I guess. Showed you can play real fast and that is somethin' with a crowd, all right, all right. But don't you know some really good music?"

"Good music!" Kreutzer faltered, at a loss. That which he had played had been among the best the world has ever known.

"Yes; rag-time stuff, an' such. Real pop'lar."

"No," said Kreutzer, sadly, "I fear I do not know good music of the kind you name." He made as if to turn away, but then bethought himself and whirled back hopefully. "But I can learn," he said. "Simple things, without a doubt, I could play on sight."

"Off the notes, you mean?"

"Yah; so."

"Take this, then." The manager held toward him a thick book of rag-time melodies.

Kreutzer, too desperate to be disgusted, ran through half-a-dozen of them rapidly. Now the manager beamed pleasantly.

"Say, you'll do, all right, all right," he told the flute-player. Then, turning to the rest he motioned them away. "Beat it, you guys," he commanded. "Father Rhine here's got the job."



CHAPTER V

Down in the new tenement Anna and her little slave, M'riar, worked hard, that day, at cleaning.

"W'ere Hi wuz born," M'riar gravely commented, "we wuz brought up on dirt an' liked hit, but we never wusn't greedy for hit, like th' way these folks, 'ere, 'as been."

Anna, in the next room, was for the first time in her life working with a scrubbing-brush, and, presently, M'riar heard its swish.

"Hi s'y!" she cried, and dashed into the gloomy cubby-hole. "Wot's this? You scrubbin'? Drop it, now, you 'ear? Hit 'yn't fer me to show no disrespeck, Frowline, but—drop it. Hi 'yn't a-goin' to have them pretty 'ands hall spoilt."

"But, M'riarrr, I just love to scrub."

"Don't love hanythink so vulgar," M'riar replied without a moment's hesitation. "Don't you bother lovin' hanythink but just the guvnor, and—and—Mr. Vanderlyn." She looked down at blushing Anna who, upon her knees, was astonished almost into full paralysis. And then she shrilly laughed.

"Hi knows!" said she. "Hi knows."

"M'riarrr," said Anna slowly, rising, "you are crrazy."

"Not so cryzy as a 'ackman 'ammerin' 'is 'ead hagainst a 'ouse." said M'riar. "There's cryzier. Love mykes 'em that w'y."

"Quite crrazy," Anna answered; but she was blushing furiously.

"Blushin' red as beefstykes," M'riar commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin' to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she asked her mistress, now.

"Father left a word."

"Ho, did 'e?" M'riar asked.

"Yes; certainly."

"Ho, did 'e!" M'riar exclaimed again. "Wot mykes yer think 'e did?"

"He told me so."

M'riar sat back, astounded. She knew he had not done so, for she, herself, had asked the landlord there and been assured that no hint had been given. She did not know just what to do, but soon reached a decision.

"Hi'll tell yer, frow-line. I reckon 'e forgot or else th' toff there, 'e don't ricollick. Hi knows as 'e don't know w'ere 'tis we've come to. 'E tol' me hit 'ad slipped 'is mind."

"Oh," said Anna, in distress.

"'Ow's Mr. Vanderlyn to find, then?"

"Oh, I do not know," said Anna in dismay.

"Hi do," said M'riar, scrubbing furiously toward Anna till that dainty maiden fled before her and took refuge in the doorway. "Hi'm goin' back there to leave word fer 'im."

"Father might not wish—" Anna began doubtfully.

"Mr. Vanderlyn—'e would," said M'riar.

"Perhaps—he might," said Anna.

When Herr Kreutzer reached the tenement again he was both humbled and elated. To have discovered any kind of work was fortunate, to have found the only place available a cheap beer-garden was disheartening. But work he had and they could live, which surely was a great deal to be thankful for.

"Ach, liebschen," he exclaimed on entering, anxious to apprise her of his luck, loath to tell her all its details. "I have work. I play first flute, from this time onwards, in a—pleasure park." He did not tell her that there was no second flute or any other instrument save a terrible piano, played by a black "professor"; he did not tell her that "the park" was a beer-garden.

She rushed to him and threw her arms about his neck.

"We celebrate a little," he said grandly, and began to draw out of his great-coat pockets the materials for a bona-fide dinner, for, knowing that he could redeem it the next Saturday, he had put his watch in pawn. They had not had real dinners lately. "M'riar, she will cook it."

"My heye!" said M'riar, taking the first package, and, when he followed it with others: "Ho, Hi sye!"

She had just come in from her uncannily quick dash across town—M'riar had learned the simple key to New York's streets and rushed about them without fear—to leave their new address for Mr. Vanderlyn. She felt, therefore, that she had accomplished a good deed that day and was in the very highest spirits. She went to work upon the supper with a will and singing, which greatly distressed Kreutzer, although he would not have expressed his pain for worlds.

"I work from six to eleven," he told his daughter, in explaining the arrangement he had made. The manager had said that at eleven all sober folks had gone and that those who still remained were all too drunk to know if there was music or was not; but the old man did not tell his daughter this. He hoped that she would never know how humble and unpleasant the work which he had found must be.

The very next day Vanderlyn appeared, to M'riar's satisfaction and Anna's fluttering joy. He was most respectful, plainly very anxious to be of further service to her and her father. She felt a little guilty because she had sent M'riar with the address—if her father had not left it he certainly had failed to for no other purpose than preventing Vanderlyn from getting it—but surely it was right for her to be good friends with one who wished to be so kind to him and her! An hour passed most delightfully in that earnest conversation about little which engages young folk of their age and suffering from the complaint which ailed them both.

"But I really had a solemn, sober errand to attend to when I came," he said, at length. "My mother fell in love with you." (He wished he might have told her that her son had, also.) "She is anxious to see more of you." (He did not tell her that the reason was his mother's firm conviction that her father certainly was a distinguished person in hard luck, incog.) "This summer, while she was in Europe, she found that she was sadly handicapped by knowing almost nothing of the German language. She wants to know if you won't come to her and teach her. You could also be her friend, you know; a sort of young companion to a lonely woman." He was making it sound as attractive as he could. He had devised the scheme with earnest care, had brought his mother round to eagerness for it with cautious difficulty, and now presented it with diffidence and fear to the delightful girl he loved.

"I teach?" said Anna, delighted by the thought of being able, thus, to help her father, and, at the same time, not utterly averse to anything which would make frequent glimpses of her knight-errant an easy certainty. "I don't know if I could teach."

"Why, it's a cinch," said the enthusiastic lover. "I don't think she will be slow to learn. She'll work hard, mother will; she didn't like this summer's trip too well. The crowned-heads didn't tip their crowns and bow as she went by."

"You are mistake," said Anna gravely. "Kings do not wear their crowns upon the streets."

He laughed. "You see how much we've got to learn?" he asked. "May I tell my mother that you'll come?"

"I shall ask my father," Anna answered.

Reluctantly, after a week, Herr Kreutzer gave consent. He was afraid he might not hold the place in the beer-garden. He hated the cheap rag-time music which the man insisted on and had held his temper with much difficulty, when he had been reproved for playing "hymns" because he had, for solos, interspersed a worthy number now and then. With his tenure of that place uncertain, not sure that he could find another, he felt that he would have no right to interpose too serious objections to the highly flattering arrangement Mrs. Vanderlyn proposed. His worry about Vanderlyn subsided, somewhat, when he found the young man was away from town much of the time.

The little tenement-house apartment was a lonely place, when he was there, after Anna took up her new work and could come to it but once a week and M'riar was a comfort to him. An astonishing companionship grew up between the strangely differing pair. To save his ears he taught her something about singing; to save her pride from gibings from the other children in the block (who were irreverent and sometimes made a little fun of Kreutzer) she saw to it that he was always brushed when he went out. Indeed she made him very comfortable.

Monday afternoons were what made life worth living, though, to him. On Monday afternoons there was no music at the beer-garden and Mrs. Vanderlyn gave Anna, also, that time to herself so they had these hours together, reunited.

Anna's absence from him among strangers was a constant worry and humiliation to him. He reproached himself continually because his poverty had made it necessary. She was at that age, he knew, when maidens learn to love, and she must never learn to love until—until he could go back, with her to his dear Germany, where were such men as he would choose for her. And when would that be safe? Oh, when would that be safe!

He wondered if it was not yet time to trust her with the secret which he had concealed from her her whole life long. The temptation was tremendous. Some day she would know why he had lived, must live a fugitive. Must he wait on, for other weary years? He sat immersed in thought of these things, while M'riar worked at making everything as near to neat perfection as her training in the London lodging-house made possible.

The old man's thoughts dwelt much upon young Vanderlyn. His Anna would see much of him, ere long, when the young man's western trips were ended. But she must not fall in love with him! It would not do for Anna Kreutzer, daughter of the beer-garden flute-player, to marry an American. But how, without revealing to her what he hid, could he be certain that she understood this? He wondered if it had not been a great mistake to let her go to Mrs. Vanderlyn, and then laughed bitterly because he had not "let" her go; a grim necessity had forced it—it, or something else which might have been much less desirable.

It was almost dinner-time when Anna came—radiantly beautiful, with her crisp color heightened by the rapid run from her employer's in the Vanderlyn's great touring-car. She had not wished to ride in it, but had been told to, so that she might have the time to do some errands and still get to her home on time.

"It is fine for you, up there, at the great house of Mrs. Vanderlyn, eh, Anna?" said the old man after they had greeted one another lovingly.

"But yes," said Anna, "it is pleasant. She is kind—oh, ve-ry kind; but, father, I miss you! I miss you every day and every hour. Of mornings, when I rise, I wonder what it is that you are having, down here in the little home, for breakfast. I wonder if M'riarrr still is thoughtful and remembers all that she has learned about the sweeping and the scrrrubbing. I wonder how things went with you the night before, in that grreat orchestra at that amusement park. Do they still think the first-flute a gr-r-reat musician, father?"

He smiled. "At the garden none has, so far, made complaint about my playing," he said slowly, "except that I am not quite willing, sometimes, to play the music they seem best to like." He would not have told her all the details of his battles against rag-time, for the world. "It is music of the negroes, Anna. Er—er—syncopation. Ach! What syncopation! All right in its place, my dear, but a whole evening of it! Ach, drives me—it grows tiresome, Anna."

"Some day, father, you will not play there," she said with emphasis. "Some day will come fortune to us—some day."

"Yes; perhaps; some day. But there is something finer than a fortune, Anna. I have been thinking, thinking, thinking, lately, of your mother, Anna. How delighted she would be to see you, now, with your dark hair! Why, Anna, it is almost black! So delighted she would be! It was blonde when you were born—blonde, fair like mine, before mine turned to white; but hers was dark, as yours is now, and I think that when she saw that yours was light she was a little disappointed till her old nurse told her that in early years her own hair had been as yours was. You were one year old, my Anna, before your hair began to show the brown."

"Do you like it, father?"

"Like it? Ah, I love it! But—I am worried."

"Worried?"

"Yes. Always in the past have I been with you. Now you are alone and beautiful. And of life you know so little, while of love—you know—ah, nothing!"

Anna was not sure of this. She had been wondering, indeed, if she did not know much of it. It startled her to have her father speak of it. There had been tremors in her heart, hot flushes in her cheeks, dim mists before her eyes when she had thought about young Vanderlyn, of which she was suspicious—very. No; she was by no means sure that she knew nothing about love—but she did not say this to her father. Instead she pressed her dark head closer to his thick white mane.

"Love!" said she. "It is such a pretty word. Tell me something of it, father."

He smiled down at her. "Ah, you have some interest! Well, I tell you." Into his old eyes there came the deep and happy glow of reminiscence of bright days. She knew the look—always was it in them when he was thinking of her mother and never was it in them at any other time.

"Love," said he, "it is life's spring-time. Ah, your mother, Anna! Your dear mother! It is the splendor and the glory of the dawn." The old man's head was back, his eyes were closed and on his face there was a singularly sweet and simple smile, more like that of a youth than that of one whose years stretch far behind him. "It is the light that falls from heaven and turns this grim old world into a paradise. It is the hand of fate that grips the heart till we must follow—follow. We cannot hold back, my Anna; I could not hold back, your lovely mother, she could not hold back. Ah, one must follow when Love's hand is clasped about one's heart and leads! Some day you will understand and many things will then be clear to you. It is the glow of ardor in the eyes, reflected from the flame which burns deep in the heart—the flame which melts, which welds a link, a mystic bond, to bind for all eternity." He opened his eyes, now, and smiled at her. "That, liebschen—that is love—ah, that is love. Your mother taught me all about it. Be careful—careful, Anna—about love!"

"It sounds so splendid as you speak of it! How shall I know when it has come to me?"

The old man's caution was all gone; his fears now all forgotten. He was thinking of past days, dear days, young days.

"How shall you know?" he asked, and smiled again, this time in soft, affectionate derision. "You will not mistake. Mistake? It is impossible. When your heart leaps at the sound of his dear footsteps; when the world is empty till he comes and then is, ah, so full that you are crowded out of it into the valleys of a paradise; when little chills run over you one moment and the next the hot blood makes your cheeks into twin roses! How shall you know? Ah, there are many signs!"

"And do you think that such a love will ever come to me?"

"To you? Of course." The old man caught himself up short, just there, and lost his rapt expression. There were still hopes in his heart of realization for his daughter of all the brilliant dreams of his own youth—those dreams which had so sadly gone quite wrong. She must do nothing which would shut her from it if ever it should become possible. "Yes; it will come to you, of course; but not for a long time, and you must be very careful," he added in a greatly altered, less magnetic voice. "You must love no one until I tell you."

"Can one make love wait?"

"Ah—well—yes—one must!"

"But father—"

"Wait! You must not question me, mine liebschen; but, someday it may be that I shall no longer flute-play in a garden. Someday, maybe, things are better with us. You must wait a while, to see if that comes true. Then—then, when it is true, I pick out for you, ach! the handsomest, the bravest gentleman that I can find. I bring him to you, and I say: 'Anna, you love him!' That is all."

She was dismayed. This was not to her taste at all! "But father—"

The old German in his worry lest the life that she must lead as the companion to the rich New Yorker might induce her to let down the barriers of the exclusiveness which that which he could not, at present name, implanted in his very soul, looked sternly at her. He wished, now, to end the talk of it. "That, Anna," he said gravely, "that is all."

"But you tell me you will pick him out and bring him to me! Must he not love me?"

This again made him forget a little. It brought back other vivid memories of those bygone days when, young and ardent, he had gone to this girl's mother with his heart aflame.

"Love you? Yah; of course he loves you. You think love is a game of solitaire? But—he will love you, liebschen. To fall very much in love with you he has only once to see you. But, Anna, it is not with women as it is with men. You must conceal your love, until he speaks."

She smiled. "And, father, what shall I do then?"

"Do when he speaks? When comes the right man and tells you that he loves you, asking you to be his wife, mine Anna, you must answer: 'For this so great honor, sir, I thank you, and I give you in return my heart and hand.'"

Ah, the visions in his mind as he said this, of the far-off German village, of the dainty maiden standing there before a gallant youthful gentleman, trying to be as formal, when she placed her hand in his, as lifelong training in the stiff formalities of life had made him, in his embarrassment, while he told his great devotion to her! Thinking back along the path of years that led to that bright garden, how Herr Kreutzer smiled!

"How beautiful that sounds!" said Anna, softly. "'For this so great honor, I thank you, and I give you in return my heart and hand.'"

It brought the old flute-player back from the far garden.

"Do not practice on it yet," he said, without unkindness, but with a firm tone which gave his words almost the stern significance of a real order. "There is no hurry, liebschen, but, when the time is ripe for it, ah, it will come. Yah; it will come."

Her thoughts were full of all this talk of love and marriage as she went to Mrs. Vanderlyn's next morning, to take up again her routine of companion and instructor to the lady in the German language. She was not so very fond of Mrs. Vanderlyn. That lady was too much absorbed in her ambition to gain real importance in the social world to leave much time for being lovable to anybody but her son. That she was fond of him no one could doubt, but he was winning his own way, and did not need her mother care. It left her free for other things; it made the other things essential to her happiness. How empty is a mother's life when from it, out into the world, her only son goes venturing, none but a mother knows. Mrs. Vanderlyn had striven to fill hers with social episodes and had not done so to her satisfaction. There were things, she had discovered, which money, by itself, cannot accomplish and the learning had astonished her. She had thought a golden key would certainly unlock all gates. It had come to her as inspiration that the easy way for an American to gain social favor in New York, where, hitherto, gates have been closed to her, might be to purchase social favor, first, in England or in Germany and then come back with the distinction of it clinging like a perfume to her garments. But the purchase had not been an easy matter. Abroad, to her amazement, money had its mighty value, but only as a superstructure. There must be firmer stuff for the foundation—family. Her family was traced too easily—for the tracing was too brief. It ended with abruptness which was startling, two generations back, in a far western mining camp. Beyond that all the cutest experts in false genealogies had failed to carry it convincingly.

"Anna," she said to the attentive girl, "tell me about your family in Germany."

"My family?" said Anna. "There is no family of mine, now, left in Germany. My father—he is here with me, my mother died when I was very young. I can remember her a little, but so little that it makes my heart ache, for it is so ver-ry little."

"I mean about your grandfather and grandmother. Who were they and what were they? You are certainly well educated."

"My father and an old woman whom he hired, in London, have taught me what they could. I studied hard because I had so little else to do. It helped me in my loneliness. Ah, I was ver-ry lonely, ach! in London!"

"Had you no friends?"

"I had my father and my M'riarrr."

"Did no one ever visit you from Germany?"

"No one ever visited from anywhere."

"What did your father do, there?"

"He played first-flute in an orchestra—a theatre."

"Did he never go back to his home—his native land—to Germany, you know, to see his relatives?"

"I think he has no relatives alive."

"Did you never ask him about that?"

"If he had wish to tell me—if there had been some for to tell about—he would have told me without asking. I never thought of asking questions about such a thing."

"It's very funny!" Mrs. Vanderlyn said somewhat pettishly. "I could have sworn, from the first time I saw your father on the steamer, that he was a man of family."

"Of family? No; Mrs. Vanderlyn, I think not so."

"And he has never told you anything?"

"He has told me, sometimes, that by and by, when something happens which he never will explain, we would go back to Germany."

The daily lesson in court German then went on. Mrs. Vanderlyn was plainly disappointed at the meagreness of Anna's family history, and did badly with her lesson; but she could not possibly complain. Anna had made no claims. She had accepted her purely of her own—she did not realize how much it, really, had been her son's—volition. Anna had not asked for the position.

"I wonder," she was thinking, when she should have been absorbed in conjugations, "if there can be the slightest danger in my having this girl here. She's pretty and she has most charming manners. That accent is too fascinating, too. John might—but then, he is a boy of too much sense. If she only had been what I hoped she was, when I saw them on the steamer—but a mere flute-player's daughter! He would never be so silly."

On later days the lessons sometimes went with better speed and more enthusiasm; but almost always Mrs. Vanderlyn was occupied with thinking of the social life she knew and wished to know, so rapid progress was not possible.

John was out of town much of the time and when he came it was impossible for him to see much of the little German maiden, and this made Anna most unhappy. Deep in her heart she knew that what her father had described had come to her—she knew she loved; but it was all a mighty puzzle. Even if he loved her in return, of which she was by no means certain, he was not at all the sort of man, she thought, of whom her father would approve. Her father's notions were the notions of the stiff old world. He had said that she must wait until he was a flute-player no longer and that when that glad time came, he would, himself, pick out for her the handsomest and bravest gentleman whom he could find and bring him to her, ready-made, to love. She knew he felt a great contempt for riches; she knew that his experience of America had far from prepossessed him in favor either of the country or the people in it. She was absolutely certain that the man whom he would choose for her would be a very different sort of person from John Vanderlyn. Handsome he was, for certain, strong he was, for sure; but he was not a German and she knew that when her father spoke of "gentlemen" he had in mind none but a well-bred, well-born German.

It seemed to her, as she reflected on this matter, that she could not possibly endure to wed a German. She was, indeed, a little frightened by what her father had declaimed about her future and the matter of her courtship.

Then things happened, all at once, so suddenly that she could scarcely credit her own knowledge of them. One morning, coming in with Mrs. Vanderlyn from a long ride, she was informed that Herr Kreutzer had just been there with M'riar, and had left a note for her upon her dressing-table after having waited for a time. The note said that he had an unexpected holiday and begged her to come home, if possible, to spend it with him, and she was just coming out of Mrs. Vanderlyn's boudoir, where she had gone to get permission, when she unexpectedly met John. He had come home without notice and ahead of time from one of his long journeys.



CHAPTER VI

"Has she not come then, yet, my child?" said Kreutzer to the busy M'riar, as he returned. He had thought that Anna might have reached the tenement by that time, for he had gone out a second time and made a number of delightful, although meagre purchases.

"No signs," said M'riar. "Yn't see a sign of 'er. But hit cawn't be long before she'll be 'ere, can it?"

"No, M'riar; not long."

The place was poorly furnished. Marks of poverty, indeed, were everywhere; but upon the little table with its oil-cloth cover, soon began to show, as he brought package after package from his pockets, an array of goodies which amazed M'riar greatly. From the little gas-pipe chandelier which hung above the table (fly-specked and badly rusted before M'riar's busy hands had done their best to polish it, and still uncouth in its plain iron and sharp angles), he hung a little wreath of evergreen. Out of a package, with the utmost care, he produced a frosted cake.

"See, M'riar!" he cried.

"Hi sye!" said M'riar, examining it with distant care as if she feared that it would either break or bite. "Won't she be took haback?"

"And," said Herr Kreutzer, delving busily in a pocket of his long, limp, overcoat, "a bottle of good wine."

"My heye!" said M'riar, awed and gaping admiration. "She will be took haback!"

"And, see again?" said Kreutzer, taking other treasures out of packages and pockets, including a roast fowl, and celery and other fixings. "It is not often, lately, that I have my Anna with me. When she comes, then we must do what we can do to make her welcome." He might have added that it was not often that a little stroke of luck brought him in money for a celebration such as this, but did not.

"Such a feast!" said M'riar.

"Ah, it is something," said the flute-player. "It is little I can do. I earn so little in this country—less, even, than I earned in London; and here all things cost so much—more, even, than they cost in London."

M'riar went to the window, after having seen the good things, while his hands went to his pocket and brought from it the door-key and a pocket-knife. He laughed a little bitterly. "The little feast has cost the last cent in my pocket! When night comes I must walk back to the Garden!... Well what matter? Anna is not suffering, and to-day she will be happy here with me."

"Hi, she's comin'," M'riar screamed and dashed out of the room.

Herr Kreutzer gazed after her with a wide smile of toleration. She had not been a nuisance; she had been very useful. "I worried when we found her on the ship," said he, "and here she is, my housekeeper, while Anna is more happy in the mansion of the Vanderlyns! So things occur as we do not expect."

There came to him the sound of chattering voices on the stair. He hurried to the door.

"Anna, Anna!" he called into the hallway.

An instant later and she sprang up the last flight and ran into his opened arms. "Father!" she cried happily. There was an unwonted flush upon her cheeks, a new, soft glow within her eyes, a certain subtle dignity about her bearing which he failed to note, but which she knew was there and which the keener eyes of M'riar saw and were much puzzled by.

"Father!" she cried again, and held him in so close a clasp that his face reddened quite as much because she choked him as because his heart was beating high with happiness at sight of her.

"Come, come," said he, and led her to a chair by the window which commanded a small vista of back-yards—the only glimpse of out-of-doors the tiny tenement apartment offered. "My liebling! My little Anna! It is good to hold you so, again!" He clasped her in his arms.

"'Yn't it beautiful!" M'riar muttered, gazing at them. "W'ite as snow 'is 'air looks, w'en 'ers that is that dark, is hup hagainst it close, like that!"

"Dear old father!" Anna cried, as she drew back. She took him by the shoulders, now, and, with her beautifully modelled, firm young arms, held him away from her so that she might examine him. With loving scrutiny she studied every line of the old face. Instantly she noted the weary droop of tired eyelids. "Are you sure you are quite well?"

He smiled. "Always I am well, when you are with me. Always well when you are with me, Anna."

"You look tired. Ah, it is not easy for you when you play—"

His heart stood still for half-a-dozen beats. Could it be possible that she had learned how he had lied to her about the place in which he played? Had she learned that it was not a park of elegant importance?

"It is a fine, a splendid park," he interrupted. "Some day I shall take you there, with M'riar, and shall show you. Not at once. At present I must be quite sure to please and so must play without distraction. Your presence might confuse me, so that I could not give satisfaction; but, someday, when things are a little better—then I take you with me."

As he lied away her fears his soul was bitterly inquiring what his daughter who had such respect for him and for his music, would think if she could hear him as he stood upon a rough-board platform, or sat beside a cheap piano, pounded by a colored youth who kept a glass of beer on one end and a cigarette upon the other as he played. What would Anna think of her old father if she heard him tootle on his flute, with all the breath which he could muster, the strains of "Hot Time," an old favorite, or "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie," not quite so old, but infinitely more offensive than the frank racket of the negro melody to his sensitive ear? How would her artistic soul revolt if she should hear his flute—his precious flute!—inquiring if anybody there had seen an Irishman named Kelly?

"What do they like best, my father?" Anna asked him, still looking searchingly into his face, as if she saw signs there which did not reassure her. "Mozart, possibly, or Grieg?"

"I think it is 'An Invitation to the Dance,'" said he, and smiled again, more sweetly, more convincingly than ever. "'Around, around, around!'" he muttered, bitterly, sarcastically, as he turned away from her.

"What, father?"

"That melody, so sweet; those words, so full of lovely sentiment—they cling in my old mind, my liebschen," said Herr Kreutzer, to cover up his error. "They what you call it? Keep running in my head—ah, around, around within my head, my liebschen."

"Somehow, I am af-raid that you do not, really, like the place where you are playing."

"It is a fine, a splendid park, my Anna," Kreutzer cried in haste. "I am a grumbler—an old grumbler. My only real cause for complaint is that I must play so very loud for some" (his heart was sore with a humiliation of the night before), "while, for others, it is necessary that I plays so s-o-f-t-l-y—lest my flute disturb their conversation. I am puzzled, Anna, that is all. Quite all. There is no cause for you to worry." He placed his hand upon her shoulder, and, as he sank wearily to the stiff, wooden chair which was as easy as the room could boast, she dropped to her knees beside him.

Her heart was very full. Vividly she longed to tell him that the love, of which he had discoursed to her, had not come in the least as he had said it would—summoned by his counsel after he had searched and found the man whom he decided would be best for her to marry. No; love had not approached her logically, rationally, as result of careful thought by a third party; it had come, instead, as might a burglar, breaking in; an enemy, making an assault upon an unsuspecting city in the night. She had yielded up the treasures of the casket of her heart without a murmur to the burglar; the city had capitulated without fighting, without even protest. She was sure he would not find it easy to approve of her selection.

So she was not ready, yet, to tell him; she was not ready to destroy the happiness of this, their day together, as she feared that such a revelation must, inevitably.

"Hard times, father!" she said, temporizing. "But perhaps, sometime, they shall be changed. Perhaps I shall be rich, some day."

"Ah, Anna, no; such thoughts are what they call, up at the park, the—the—what is it? Ah, I have it—dream of the pipe. Rich we shall never be, my Anna."

"But it's so hard as it is. Only once-a-while can we be here together."

"Hard?" said he, and smoothed her hair. "You must not say that. It is so sweet when once-a-while it comes! It makes me so happy—"

"Dear!"

Depression seized him, now. Fiercely the thought rose in his mind that while he waited for these meetings with the keenest thoughts of joy, she, on the other hand, must look forward to them with emotions much less purely happy. That she was glad to be with him he did not doubt; he could not doubt; but what a contrast must his poor rooms offer to the luxurious surroundings of her other days! It would be only human if she yielded to an impulse to be critical, only human if, against her will, she felt contempt for his dire poverty. The black thought filled his soul with bitterness.

"Look," he said, and rose with a sudden gesture almost of despair. "What must you think of me, my liebschen? Poor little rooms! They are no place for you. Ah, no; for you the grand and beautiful home of Mrs. Vanderlyn!"

His scorn of self was written, now, so plainly on his face, in such fierce lines of deep contempt and loathing, that, as she looked at him, it frightened her. She, also, rose and lightly clasped her arms about his neck in an appeal.

"There, all the week," he went on with less virulence, "you have, as her companion, the happy life I wish for you, Ah, your old father does not grudge you that, my liebschen! And, after all, you do not falter in your love. My poverty does not make you forget me—eh?"

"Forget you, father? These hours are pleasantest of all! These hours with you here in these rooms which you say are 'poor' are far, far pleasanter to me than any hours at Mrs. Vanderlyn's."

"Ah, so," said he. "Yes, you come back to me and we are happy—very happy. It is my good luck—much better than I really deserve. Come, now, come. A little cake, a little wine, in honor of your visit. M'riar, M'riar—where have you gone, M'riar?"

From the other room the slavey came with reddened eyes.

"'Ere, sir; 'ere Miss." She was snuffling.

"Why, M'riar," said Kreutzer, in dismay! "What is it? Why weep you?"

"Ho, it allus mykes me snivel w'en I sees you two together, that w'y. Hi cawn't stand it. 'Ow you love! It mykes me 'ungry. Yuss, fair 'ungry. Nobody ain't hever loved me none—it mykes me 'ungry."

Quick with remorse and sympathy Anna pounced upon her and enfolded her in a great hug, realizing, for the first time, that, on entering, she had been too anxious to show her affection for her father, too full of worry over what she had, that day, to tell him, to remember M'riar.

"Dear M'riarrr!" she said softly. "Dear M'riarrr! We love you. Don't we father—love her?"

"Yah; sure we love her," Kreutzer answered heartily and patted the child's head. "We love her much."

"My heye!" said M'riar, happily, her sorrows quickly vanishing. "'Ow much nicer New York his than Lunnon!"

It was with the grace of an old cavalier that Kreutzer led his daughter to the table, and called her attention to the little feast he had prepared.

The small display of goodies would have seemed poor enough had she compared it to the everyday "light luncheons" at the Vanderlyns', but she did not so compare it. Back to the old days of modest plenty which they had known in London, to the days of almost actual need which they had known in New York City, went her mind, for its comparison, and thus she found the feast magnificent. With real fervor she exclaimed above it. Her pleasure was so genuine that the old flute-player was delighted. "How splendid!" she cried honestly.

Having placed her in her chair he began, at once, in the confusion of his joy, to cut the cake, ignoring, utterly, the chicken. She did not call attention to his absent-mindedness.

"It looks almost like a wedding cake!" said she and laughed—but then, suddenly, there flooded back on her remembrance of the secret she must tell him before she left the tenement that afternoon. It sobered her. How would he take the news that she had not been content to wait for him to bring to her his wonderful "brave gentleman?"

"Ah, you are thinking about weddings!" he said genially, still cutting at the cake. For an instant she imagined that she had aroused suspicions, but, quickly, she saw plainly that he was but lightly jesting. "Have a care, my Anna! Have a care!"

Suddenly her heart was filled with resolution. When would there be a better time than now in which to tell him her sweet secret? It could not be that he would be so very angry. His love for her, his longing that she might be happy, were, she knew, too great for that. And, later, when he knew Jack Vanderlyn as well as she had come to know him, he would realize, as she did, that nowhere in the world, not in the castles of the barons on the Rhine, not in the palaces of kings, could he or anyone find more genuine gentility than in this free-born unpretending young American.

"Father!" she said timidly.

"My girl," said he, without the least suspicion that her heart could, really, be touched by anyone in this cold land of crude democracy, "you must always come and tell me if your heart begins to flutter like a little bird. You—"

"Of—course, my father."

The matter had not in the least impressed him. As she turned and re-turned something in her hand beneath the table, and tried to rouse her courage to the point of making full confession, the old man quietly dismissed the subject.

"Now, a health to you, my Anna," he said gaily and raised high his glassful of cheap wine. "May the good God give you all the happiness your father wishes for you! More than that I cannot say, for I wish you all the happiness in all the world. Ah, when I look at you I am so full of joy! It is as if sweet birds were singing in my heart. Wait—you shall hear!"

Forgetting the great feast, as, seized by the impulse to express himself in the completest way he knew he turned from her with a bright smile, he crossed the tiny room and took down from the mantlepiece his flute.

"Ah, play for me!" she cried, delighted, both at the prospect of the music, which she loved with a real passion, and at the prospect of the brief reprieve the diversion would afford her from the revelation which she had to make.



He pretended shy reluctance. "No; in your heart you do not really wish to hear. You have grown tired of the old flute, long ago."

She laughed and rose and went to him. "Bad boy! He must be teased! I am not tired of it. To me it is in all the world, the sweetest music. Must I say more? Come, come, for me!"

"Ah, then—for you!"

He raised the old flute to his lips and settled it beneath the thatch of whitened hair which covered his large, sensitive mouth. He took a little breath of preparation. Then he closed his eyes and played.

Such music as came from that flute! It was as if the "sweet birds singing in his heart" had risen and were perched, all twittering and cooing, chirping, carolling upon his lips. And all they sang about was love—love—love—a father's love for his delightful daughter. Sweet and pure and wholly lovely was the melody which filled the room and held the charming woman it was meant for spellbound; held the little slavey from the grime of London as one hypnotized upon her chair; sang its way out of the window, down into the grimy court between this dingy tenement and the whole row of dingy tenements which faced the other street, and made a dozen little slum-bred children pause there in their play, in wonder and delight. Ah, how Kreutzer played the flute, that day, for his beloved Anna!

"Ah, when you play," said she, as with a smile, he laid the wonderful old instrument upon the shelf again, "it is your life, your soul—you put all into the old flute!"

"Yes, Anna; and to-day it was far more. It was my love for you—that was the greatest part of it; and there were sweet memories of my native land." The fervor of his playing, more than the effort of it, had exhausted him. He sat down somewhat wearily, with a long sigh. "But we will not speak of our native land, my Anna," he said sadly. "Ach! I am a little tired." He held his arms out to her. "But happy—very happy," he said quickly when he saw the look of quick compassion on her face. "And you?"

The burden of her secret had grown heavy on her heart. It did not seem a decent thing to wait a moment more before she told it to him.

"I am happy, too—but—but—oh, my father, father!"

She threw herself into his arms, bursting into tears.



CHAPTER VII

The old flute-player looked down upon his lovely daughter as, sobbing, she clung to him, with bewildered, utterly dismayed amazement. What could be the matter with the child? He glanced about him helplessly. It dazed him. Everything, a moment since, had been so bright and gay! There had been a smile upon her lips, a soft glow of happiness alight within her eyes. He could not understand this situation. He was actually frightened.

So, also, was M'riar, who stood gaping at the spectacle of her Miss Anna's grief with wide, fear-stricken eyes.

"Cawn't Hi do nothink for 'er, sir?" she said, approaching timidly.

For the first time in his life he spoke almost harshly to the child, in his excitement. "No," he said emphatically. "You will only stand and say 'My heye! Hi sye! Hi sye! My heye!' You can do nothing. It would be well for you to step into the kitchen, possibly. I smell me that there may be something burning, there. And do not come again until I call to you. If nothing burns there, now, then something might burn, later. It would be well for you to stay and watch." He had no wish to hurt the poor child's feelings—but his Anna! Surely none but he must witness this completely inexplicable, this mad outburst of wild woe.

"What is this, my Anna?" he said softly to the weeping girl who clung there in his arms when M'riar had left the room. "You are tear-ing, Anna—you are tear-ing, child!" He was sure his English had escaped him, but he could not stop to make correction.

She looked up at him, at last. "'Tear-ing? Tear-ing?' Oh, crying! Yes, I'm crying—because I am so happy, and because—"

He was more puzzled by this extraordinary statement than he had been by her tears. "Because you are so happy! Hein! A woman—she is strange. So strange. She cries because she is so happy, then she cries because she is so sorry. When she cries no one can tell which makes her do it. You are sure it is the happiness, this time, that makes you cry?"

"Quite sure," said Anna, trying hard to stifle the great sobs. "Yes; I am certain. It is because I am so happy, and—because—I am a little bit—af-fraid!"

"You are afraid, my child? What is it fears you?"

She slipped out of his arms. There was no going back, she now must tell him all. She knew that he would not be harshly angry, though she greatly feared he would be sorely grieved.

She held him, with a gentle hand, back in his chair as he would have arisen, and sank down at his feet, her arm upon his knee, her face upturned. "Come, father," she said simply. "I want to sit here at your feet. I want to sit here at your feet just as I did when I was, oh, a very little girl!"

The old man was sorely puzzled, but he sank back in his chair and let her take his hands—both of them. One of them she placed upon her beautiful, dark hair; the other she held close clasped against her bosom in her own. "Father, I have something to confess."

He was amazed, but less distressed than he had been. His Anna, his own, liebling Anna, could not have anything to confess which was so very terrible. He looked down at her and smiled in reassurance. Her wonderful, dark eyes were upturned, as he gazed, and, for an instant, looked straight at his; but then the delicately veined lids drooped.

"You have something to confess? What is it, Anna?"

"I shall not go back again to Mrs. Vanderlyn's," she slowly answered. "I have come home, my father; have come home to you—to stay."

He was worried. Could she be satisfied, after what she had been having there at Mrs. Vanderlyn's, with what his small purse had to offer her in this unpleasant tenement? His heart leaped at the thought of having her with him again; none but himself could know how greatly he had missed her, and he could give her food and shelter. But would she, now, be happy there with him, in all his poverty?

"Ah; you have quarreled?" he ventured, hesitantly.

"No," she faltered.

His wrath rose. Ah, that was it! The woman had been unkind to her, had asked of her some menial service, had presumed upon the fact that she was but an employee! "She has mistreated you," he cried, in indignation. "She has mistreated you! Well, here is—"

Anna interrupted him by laying a soft hand upon his lips. She had to stretch and strain a little to reach up so far, crouched low there, as she was, quite at his feet. Her heart was beating very fast as came the time for her confession. She hoped that he would not be very angry, very greatly horrified.

"No," she said slowly; "no, we have not quarreled, she has not mistreated me; but—she will be very angry—she will not forgive me, when she knows—"

Kreutzer was affrighted. There seemed to him to be a hint of dreadful revelations to be made in the soft droop of Anna's head, the trembling of her little hand in his, the swift ebb and flow of the rich color in the pink satin of her cheeks.

"Anna," he said, aghast, "what is there for her to know? Oh, my Anna—what is there for her to know? Fear not. Your old father—he will understand and will forgive—will forgive anything in all this world—no matter what. Remember that. Remember that, and tell me, Anna, what is there for Mrs. Vanderlyn to pardon?"

She did not lift her head. Her eyes flashed up at him in one quick look of terror, but never by an inch did she raise toward her father's, now, her pale, affrighted face. "It was a great temptation, father," she said slowly. "A very great temptation."

Now he was alarmed, indeed. "Anna," he demanded, in a voice that was not like his own, "what have you done? What have you done?"

Every horrid thought—but one—which could flash into being in the human mind at such a time, rushed into his, in a terrific jumble of mad speculations.

For a moment Anna cowered, alarmed by what a quick glimpse of his face had shown her. She had never seen a human face so—not whitened by his fear, but greyed—greyed as if seared with fire and turned to carven ashes. She could tell, by that, that he would never, really, forgive her. Too firmly had his hopes been fixed upon the plans which he had built in many long hours of reflections going back along the years, no doubt, to that far time when she was lying, a mere babe, in her dear mother's arms. How ardently she wished, now, at this crisis, that that mother might be there to soften things for her; to turn his wrath, explain, make clear to him the fact that there are impulses too strong for women's hearts to put aside!

She did not look at him again—she could not bear to see that face again—but slowly rose and slowly crossed the little room to the crude table and took from it her handbag, which, when M'riar had cleared off the dinner things, she had replaced where it had been when she had started, first, to lay the table. As she raised the bag her father's eyes were fixed upon her in an agony of dread.

Trembling with apprehension, her fingers shaking so that it was with great difficulty that she managed the bag's clasp, she opened the receptacle, and, with accelerating nervousness which made her feel and fumble, took from it a small box—a jeweler's box. Slowly she returned to him, her feet dragging as if weighted; slowly, as she stood before him, drooping, frightened, she took off the cover of the little box, her heart hammering till it seemed as if it must burst from her breast; slowly, then, with trembling fingers, while her eyes remained steadfastly downcast and the quick rising, falling, of her delicately rounded, girlish bosom showed how keen her agitation was, she took from the opened box a sparkling trinket.

"You will understand me, father, when I show you—"

She held the brilliant bauble towards him, and, as she stretched out her hand a hundred little facets on the glittering thing caught light, there in the gloomy tenement house room, and blazed and sparkled as with inner fires.

"Look, father."

The old flute-player stretched a wondering hand to take the trinket. He could not understand, at all, what all this meant. What had the thing to do with her great agitation? How came she with so valuable a jewel? What did it mean—all of it? What under heaven could it mean?

"A ring? Ah," said he, "it is a beautiful ring set with a diamond. Where did you get it, Anna?" He laid it upon the table quickly. He did not seem to wish to hold it in his hand.

This was the crucial moment and she looked at him with dumb appeal in her fine eyes. Then, seeing nothing in his face to reassure her, she dropped her gaze. Her chest heaved with a quick sob.

"My dear, my dear," she now began, "I have a great confession. Do not, please, be angry with me, father! I must tell you—"

She was interrupted by a quick, sharp rap upon the door. There was in it the abrupt demand of an official visitation, and it startled both of them.

Hastily she rose and stood gazing at the closed door; wonderingly he rose, also, and, poised, ready to go and open it, waiting a second, to see if there would be a repetition of the knock.

"Who is there?" he called, at length.

"I, Mrs. Vanderlyn," came the reply, in high-pitched, angry tones.

"M'riar," the flute-player called loudly, "go to the door."

Anna, now very plainly much alarmed, cowered back against the table, her face turned toward the door, her two hands back of her, caught desperately on the table and supporting her. Kreutzer looked at her with new alarm—a dreadful apprehension. What could the girl have done to be thus frightened by the coming of the woman whose employment she had left?

"Mrs. Vanderlyn!" the girl gasped, weakly.

Then Kreutzer saw her do a thing which added to his great amazement, his great worry. With a quick stride she crossed the little space between her and the table, quickly snatched from it the box and ring, put the cover on the box, and, hurriedly, with almost furtive gesture, thrust the box into her handbag, being careful, he observed, to see to it that in the bag it was well covered by a handkerchief and veil.

"Why do you look so frightened?" he demanded, in a voice now hoarse and painful.

Anna was as pale as death as she replied: "I am afraid she has discovered—"

"Discovered?" said her father, a grim light breaking on his confused faculties. Ah, this was terrible, but must be faced! Ah, God! His little Anna! She had taken it—had stolen it—from Mrs. Vanderlyn! But he would stand by her. Nothing should induce him to abandon her, no matter what mad thing she had been tempted into doing. Doubtless it had been his poverty (and was his poverty not direct result of his incompetence?) which had led her into doing the dread thing which he began to understand that she had done.

Now, surely, was not the time for him to offer her reproaches. Now was the time, when he, the best friend she had, could ever have, must comfort her and shelter her. Later, if there were reproaches to be offered, would be time enough to offer them.

"Hush!" he said cautiously. "How you tremble! Anna—my little Anna! She shall not see you like this. Go, liebling. I will first speak to her. And ... whatever it may be ... fear not. Fear not."

M'riar had come in, and, fascinated by the scene, began to dimly see its awful import, also. Her training in the slums of London where a knock like that upon the door meant but one thing—the law—made the situation clear to her, at once, and, bewildered as she was by the amazing fact that it was Anna—her Frow-line—who was involved, she did not lose her head.

"This w'y," she whispered, hoarsely. "This w'y, Frow-line! This w'y!"

She hurried Anna out into the kitchen and the flute-player could hear the key turn in the lock behind them. Sure that, for the moment, his dear child was safe, he now went to the door, with measured, steady tread, and opened it.

"Come, Madame, come," he said to Mrs. Vanderlyn, who, flushed and angry, waited with small patience at the threshold.

The old flute-player caught the glint of polished buttons and a polished shield upon the breast of a man's coat beyond her, and he recognized the face above them as that of his old shipboard enemy, Moresco, now policeman on this beat.



CHAPTER VIII

The superbly dressed visitor, wrapped in silk brocades and woven feathers, seemed strangely out of place there in the doorway of the dingy tenement apartment. That she felt herself so, also, was apparent, for there was, upon her face, a look of high contempt and keen distaste. She swept into the little room with all the majesty of a proud queen, forced, by some untoward circumstance, to call at the low hovel of a very, very humble, and, probably, unworthy subject.

"Ah, Herr Kreutzer."

The old flute-player, after a scared glance into the hallway, where he had thought he saw the flash of brazen buttons, bowed low and handsomely. Among all the millionaire male friends of Mrs. Vanderlyn was not one who was half capable of such a bow, and, in a dim way she appreciated this. She did not for a moment, though, think it marked the aged man before her as a gentleman, and worthy, therefore, of consideration from a lady. She was trying to feel certain, now, that what she had believed an evidence of really high breeding, was, really, mere clever sham. The old musician had lost all the glamor of his mystery for her. Surely, had he really been what she suspected, then his daughter would have been incapable of the offense which she, its victim, had come there to punish. Now the old man's courtly grace upon the ship, by which she had been fooled into believing him a person of real eminence, was openly revealed to her as counterfeit and worthless—he was a swindler, almost, indeed, as viciously dishonest as the thing his daughter had been guilty of. Now his manner merely sent a vague reflection through her brain that upon the ocean's other side their peasants were well trained. Now she was bitterly resentful of the fact that, on the ship, she had been fooled into thinking him a person, possibly, of eminence.

"So," said Kreutzer, offering her, with graceful courtesy which made her falter in her new conviction, and a perfect ease, withal, which much astonished her, the best chair in the room. "And you, Madame, are Mrs. Vanderlyn?"

"Yes," Mrs. Vanderlyn replied. "I'm Mrs. Vanderlyn. Your daughter, till to-day, was—my companion."

"Ah, Madame; I know," said the old man. "You wish to see her? Is that the reason why you honor my so humble home, Madame?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn, who had come to bluster, was a bit nonplussed, even a bit abashed by the superb and easy manner of the man. Never in her life had she been privileged, indeed, to meet with a reception so graceful and so courteous. Could she, after all, be wrong? Here, at last, in an apartment on the top floor of a New York tenement, had she encountered what she had vainly searched for, elsewhere, even on her travels in the European countries. This was the grace and courtesy which she had read about. She really was much impressed, and, in her heart, would have been pleased if she had had an errand there less disagreeable. She wondered why she had not remembered with more accuracy, the superb demeanor of this aged man on shipboard. If she had only realized—she even might have dressed him up, she speculated, and had him at her house for dinner! She could have introduced him to her climbing friends as a musician of great eminence, abroad (she remembered with regret, now, that he really played the flute magnificently—so everyone on shipboard had exclaimed), and made them envious to a degree. But now that she had started on this task, she would not falter. She assured herself, indeed, that duty as a citizen demanded that she should not falter.

"Yes," she said to him, with real regret, "I certainly must see your daughter; but I am glad first to explain to you—"

"The pleasure," said the courtly flute-player, "is mutual, Madame. May I ask you what you must explain?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn now summoned to her face a look of sympathy, lugubrious and as sincere as she could make it. "It will be a blow, Herr Kreutzer."

The old man was uneasy, but he hid it as best he could, under a most careful, unremitting courtesy. "A blow, Madame?"

She did not speak, at once, but stood there looking at him with wide eyes which she was very careful to make sad. It made him madly nervous.

"Well, I am ready," he protested, after the delay became intolerable. "I beg of you do not delay."

"First," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, not going to the heart of the unhappy matter, as his whole soul begged of her to do, but paltering with an unnecessary explanation, "you must understand the arrangement of my house. My son's room adjoins my own; then comes the little boudoir I assigned to Anna; then—"

"Yes, Madame," said Kreutzer, unable to endure this any longer, "but what of that? You said—"

"I am positive that this afternoon no one was near those rooms but Anna."

Kreutzer was in agony. "Go on, Madame," he said, imploringly. "Do you not see that this is torture? I cannot bear it longer."

She looked at him again, with that assumed expression of compassion, and he could have torn her secret from her with hooked fingers, so exasperated, so intensely agonized was he by her delays. Finally he made a desperate, downward, begging gesture with both hands, and, understanding, she went on:

"This afternoon my son returned from somewhere, and went into his room. He did not come into my room to call me, as he sometimes does. He was very quiet and it made me curious. I thought perhaps the boy might be there suffering with some headache, or something, which he did not wish to bother me about. A mother's heart, you know—"

"Madame, I pray you, have some consideration for a father's heart, and hasten."

"I went into his room to speak to him and found that he had left it; but on his table was a little jewel-box."

The flute-player drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, so close set were his teeth. Now she was coming to it! Now she was coming to the accusation of his Anna—the accusation which—ah, God!—had been preceded by the girl's own terrible confession.

"Yes," said he, trying not to let his eyes turn toward the bag, which still lay on the table, "a jewel-box. Well, Madame, what of that?"

"Being a woman," Mrs. Vanderlyn said slowly, "I could not withstand the temptation. I looked in. Within I saw—a magnificent diamond ring."

Still she had not reached the crux of what she had to say. Would the woman never come to the great point—would she never make the charge against his Anna definite and clear? "Well?" he said unhappily, and, as he said the word a resolution found birth in his brain. His little Anna! What if she had been tempted and had yielded? He would not let her suffer for it, as this cold and haughty woman evidently wished to have her suffer! He would ward disgrace from her—at any cost.

Carefully, so that the movement could not rouse suspicion in the mind of his exasperating visitor, he put his hand behind him and let it fall on the bag upon the table. Once on it, his fingers worked with skill and that precision which is natural to fingers trained by practice on a musical instrument until they seem to have a real intelligence, scarcely dependent on the brain.

"I knew for whom the dear boy meant that jewel," Mrs. Vanderlyn went on. "He had bought it as a present for me on my birthday, which occurs tomorrow."

Kreutzer nodded slowly, his fingers working, all the time, in Anna's bag. "Presents are sometimes made on birthdays," he admitted. "Well?"

"Happy in the thought that he had remembered me, I went out for my drive, leaving the box there on his table, just where I had found it. When I reached the house again I found a note left for me by your daughter, saying that she had decided upon going from my house forever, that someday she hoped I would forgive her—"

"What had she done?" said Kreutzer, in a dry voice, full of misery.

"Ah, that she did not say." Mrs. Vanderlyn paused now, with a fine sense of the dramatic. "But immediately I looked again for that box and ring and they—were gone!"

Kreutzer, pale, his forehead damp from perspiration of pure agony, as truly sweat of pain as any ever beaded on the brow of an excruciated prisoner upon the rack, looked at her with pleading eyes. "Gone! Madame, you do not think—"

She smiled a bitter little smile. There was, also, just a touch of triumph in it, such as small souls show when they are on the point of proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna had been near that room—"

Kreutzer straightened up as one whose shoulders have been stooped for the reception of a mighty load which, finally, has been fixed upon them. "You have told him?"

"Not yet."

"Ah, that is lucky.... I beg your pardon, Madame, you have dropped your handkerchief."

The handkerchief had fallen not less than a minute before, and, instinctively, he had started forward, intending to restore it to her; but by that time the situation had begun to be quite clear to him—ah, deadly clear to him!—and, in a flash the strategy had come to him. Knowing, then, that that dropped handkerchief would be essential to its execution, he had let it lie.

Mrs. Vanderlyn turned carelessly to raise the handkerchief, and, as she turned, he carried out his plan. Quick as a flash, he slipped the box which held the ring, out of the bag and into his own pocket. When she straightened up again, after having (with a flush, for he had seemed exceedingly polite, before) recovered her own handkerchief, she found him standing as he had stood, only, possibly, a little more erect than he had been, with some addition of calm dignity to his carriage, with a calmer look in his old eyes.

"Why is it lucky that I have not told him?" Mrs. Vanderlyn asked, now. "Of course he'll have to know. Everyone must know."

It broke his self-control. "That—my little girl is—no, no, no!" he faltered. "Ah, it is not true! She is not guilty!"

She tried to show a sympathetic smile, but in it there was little actual sympathy. "Very natural that you should think so," she admitted. "It came as a great shock—and a surprise—even to me. I had thought she was unusually well-bred, refined." She sighed, as if the world were rather hard on her, to fool her so in one she had believed to be an admirable person. "But let me tell you that she has great admiration for fine jewels. I have noted that, before. And—the temptation was too strong for her. Weak spot, somewhere, in her, don't you see? It was too strong for that weak spot."

"Oh, Madame, I—"

She raised her hand as if to ward away his protests. Clearly she believed that having told him all about it, as gently as she had, she had accomplished her whole Christian duty and was under not the slightest further obligation to be merciful. "I may as well tell you," she warned him, "that I brought an officer with me. To save your natural feelings, I requested him to wait downstairs a moment and then to come and wait outside the door—er—um—in case of trouble. Just a little necessary precaution, my dear sir. A woman, coming to a place like this, alone, you see—"

He smiled. "Quite natural," he answered. "Why, I might have eaten you!" But in the absorption of his talk with her he had forgotten that, as he went to the door, he had seen a blue coat and brass buttons, had recognized the face of his old enemy, Moresco. Now the realization that, armed and uniformed, a minion of the forces of the city's law and order, that cheap foe was actually waiting for his little Anna—for his gentle, big-eyed, soft-voiced Anna!—came to him with a new and dreadful shock. His frame stiffened and his poor old, soft hands clenched into pathetic fists. "He shall not—" he began with a brave bluster, but then stopped, realizing his own helplessness.

"What can you do?" asked Mrs. Vanderlyn, and smiled again that twisted little smile which was her counterfeit of the sweet look of sympathy. "I am only doing what is right and what is necessary. I am, naturally, most indignant at this betrayal of my confidence. I will not interfere to save the girl from justice!"

From behind the kitchen door, at this, Herr Kreutzer thought he heard a sound as of swift breath indrawn through tight-set, angry teeth, but was not sure. It might have been his own. He was so terribly excited that he did not know. Certainly, from now, his angry breathing was quite audible. His little Anna taken to a prison! No! "She shall not be punished!" he exclaimed in wrath.

Mrs. Vanderlyn looked at him, for a second, as might one look at an unpleasant child who is a disappointment. Then she for the first time showed a little wrath towards him. Up to that moment her calm, maddening attitude of skin-deep sympathy had been unbroken. She spoke sharply, now, however, as she countered: "That will not depend on you."

"It shall depend on me!" said Kreutzer, hotly.

"There is but one thing which will lighten the severity of the bad girl's punishment," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, didactically.

"And that, Madame?"

"The immediate restitution of the ring. She is here, now, is she not?"

"Yes, she is here, but—"

The poor old man looked helplessly around him. The whole thing seemed too terrible to be believed. He wondered if some dreadful nightmare did not hold him prisoner and half expected, as he let his agonized old eyes roam round the room, to wake up, presently, and find the episode was but a dreadful dream.

"Call her; ask her to give it up—"

"No," said the old man softly, careful that his voice should not rise so that it could easily be audible in the adjoining room, "I will not ask her to give up the ring, for the ring is not in her possession. She would not know of what I spoke. She would look at me, my Anna would, with soft reproach in her sad eyes and wonder if her poor old father had gone mad to bring an accusation such as that against her soul—so pure—so innocent—so—"

"Certainly she has the ring." The woman, now, was definitely sneering at his protestations of his daughter's worthiness.

"No; she has not got the ring. I—have it—"

From his pocket he drew forth his hand and in it lay the little box. Out of the box, with trembling fingers, he removed the ring, and held it up, smiling at her, as he did so, with a wondrous look of triumph—not the look of one who has just placed his feet, quite consciously, upon the road that leads to prison, but that of one who has won victory against great odds. She could not understand that look.

And that was not so strange, for on the face of the old flute-player the expression was like few this selfish old world ever sees—the expression of complete self-abnegation, of absolute self-sacrifice for pure and holy love.

"The ring, Herr Kreutzer!" Mrs. Vanderlyn exclaimed, in relief, sure, now, for the first time, of the recovery of the precious trinket. "The ring! She's given it to you!"

Herr Kreutzer laid the box upon the table and drew back with studied calm to gaze at her reflectively, as is necessary to a man who, as he stands and talks, must fashion from his fancy a cute fiction logical enough and clear enough to save from overwhelming sorrow one whom he loves better than he loves himself. "I tell you the whole truth," he said, "on one condition. One condition, mind you, Madame—and that condition must be kept. It is that she—my Anna—shall never be disturbed, annoyed—"

The woman shook her head with emphasis. Self-righteous and indignant, feeling that her confidence had been betrayed as well as her ring stolen, she was determined not to let the guilty girl escape. "I cannot promise that," she said with emphasis, "for she is guilty."

The German raised himself to his full height and stood there towering over her, the very effigy of sublime fatherhood. "She is not guilty!" he exclaimed. "No; it is I—I—I!"

"You!" Mrs. Vanderlyn fell back a step or two, staring at him in amazement. Could the man be crazy? This unexpected turn of the affair brought a gasp of sheer astonishment from her.

From behind the door Herr Kreutzer thought he heard, again, a sound as of swift breath drawn through tight shut teeth, but again he was not sure—nor did it matter. When, an instant later, the door softly opened, then as softly closed and left M'riar there in the room with them, standing, for a second, with her back against the portal which she had just come through, neither of them glanced at her. The situation which involved them was too tense, too fiercely was their full attention focussed upon one another. They scarcely noted that she passed as she went through the room and out the other door.

"Yes," said Herr Kreutzer, "it is I who took the ring."



CHAPTER IX



"You who took the ring!" said the astonished woman. "How utterly absurd! You have not been in my house." She was so amazed by his confession, which, she knew, could not have the least foundation, that, for the moment, she forgot to pose, either as an injured benefactress or as an avenging nemesis.

Now Herr Kreutzer smiled. Having determined on the sacrifice, he was delighted by this first error in her argument. "Yes, Madame," he said, quite truthfully, "I have been at your house. I called while you were driving. M'riar will tell you. She went with me. I called there to tell Anna that I should expect her here, this afternoon. A servant showed me to her room—showed M'riar and me both to her room. I can prove all of this by M'riar—by your own servants, Madame. I waited for her, for a time, there in her room, and, as I walked to and fro, I saw, through an open door, upon a table—that jewel-box."

Mrs. Vanderlyn was looking at him in complete astonishment. Even in her artificial soul there rose some admiration for the man who would confess to felony, rather than submit his child to suffering.

"And you—," she cried.

He bowed before her, almost as he had, in bygone days, bowed low before an appreciative audience. Was not this, as much as ever any solo on the flute had been, a triumph of high art? And more! Was it not the triumph of his love for Anna over, first, this hard-souled, little-minded Mrs. Vanderlyn, and, second, the last selfish impulse lingering within his own unselfish soul?

"I am very, very poor, Madame," he said. "I am only a poor flute-player. Things have not gone well with me since I have been in your so great, so glorious country. No; they have gone very far from well with me. If they had not gone most ill do you imagine that I ever would have let my Anna go to you as your companion? Do you not imagine that it cut my soul to have her separate from me, that it cut my pride to have to tacitly admit that I was quite unable to provide for her? Yes, Madame; it cut both soul and pride. But I am very poor. What could I do? I am so poor that always I have little to wear—see, Madame, this old suit is all that I possess! It prevents me, possibly, from getting better wages than I might get if I were not so shabby. Often, also, I do not have enough to eat. That, Madame, is true, although my Anna does not know it. Well, glittering in that little box upon the dresser, when I was there at your house, I saw so much comfort, so much happiness."

The old man's art had won, indeed. He had quite convinced the woman that it had been he and not his daughter who had stolen the diamond.

She was not exactly disappointed, although it robbed the crime of one of its most dramatic elements—ingratitude. She was being quite as well diverted by the old man's dignity and calm as she would have been by his poor Anna's wild, hysterical grief. She was, perhaps, she thought, a very lucky woman. She had not only had a valuable diamond stolen, which, of itself, was entertaining, in a way, but she had recovered it through such a strange experience as would furnish food for tales to be told in boudoirs and over tea-cups for three months.

"So it really was you!"

"Yes, yes; have I not told you?"

There was an inconsistency in this affair, however, and Mrs. Vanderlyn thought herself a veritable Sherlock Holmes as she pounced on it. "But that note from Anna?" she protested.

Kreutzer had been thinking of that note from Anna, and, for a time, had found the obstacle a hard one to surmount. At length, and in good time to meet the question, he had, however, arranged an explanation, which, if not too carefully looked into, would seem reasonable.

"Oh, of course," said he. "You mean the note about her going away? Why, that is easily to be understood. When she came I told her that I have had luck. I told her that we have much money and we go to Germany, at once. I was afraid that if she went back to your house there would arise suspicions, so I said she must not go, but must be content with just the note, alone, for her goodbyes. She did not wish to do this, but consented, at the last, because I ordered her to do it."

Mrs. Vanderlyn was now entirely convinced. He had made the case against himself so black she could not doubt it; but she determined that if he thought he would gain clemency in payment for the frankness of his full confession he would find himself to be mistaken. It was her duty as a member of society, she told herself, to see to it that the guilty poor who prey upon the helpless rich should not pass on unpunished.

"I understand," she said, "you are the guilty one. Your daughter is quite innocent of this. It may be chance, alone, that keeps her so. With such a father—but I will be merciful and will not show you what a vile inheritance of wickedness you have prepared for the poor child. Your conscience will do that, if you have any conscience. While you are in prison you will have that to reflect upon."

He was dismayed. The ring had been returned. Would she still—"I—I must go to prison?"

"Why, certainly. Don't you see how necessary that is? What would happen to society if thieves were left unpunished?"

"Thief!" The word fell on his ears with tragic force. A thief in prison! Was this to be the end of all his striving? Were the high hopes and ambitions of his splendid youth to end, at length, behind the bars of a thief's cell? Ah, those happy, bygone days, when with unbounded hope and confidence he had promised all things to the lovely creature he had wooed and won and wed in that toy village far away in the Black Forest! What was their fruition! Unhappiness, disgrace and exile for her loveliness, and finally a child for whom she paid the supreme price of death. His promises, breathed at her bedside of unwavering care, unfaltering devotion, unfailing happiness for the wee baby in the years to come—how had he kept them? Poverty, distress, privation. With such commodities had he redeemed those promises, and, finally, had driven the girl, naturally as sweet-souled as an angel, as pure as the new-fallen snow, to vulgar crime to satisfy, no doubt, those girlish and quite natural desires which it should have been his duty and his pleasure to provide for. Oh, he had done well with life! The soul within him writhed in agony as he reflected on the use which he had made of it. His heart went sick from shame. And—what would Anna do without him?