The Nest Builder

lace that night. Miss Elliston, who had promised to sing, went below a little earlier than u

aid, "but I can't get out of it.

Stefan, laughing. "Instead, I'll heap coals of fire on him

or-worse still-suppose she did make a success-by singing bad music! Suppose she lacked art in what she did! She was perfection; he was te

ing of that sort, it would fall flat, and she would be disappointed. So he tortured himself all through dinner, at which he did not see her, for he had been unable to get his plac

hat extent. Byrd added the scorn of the artist to the constitutional dislike of the average American for conventional evening dress. His, however, was as little conventional as possible, and while he nervously adjusted it he could not help recognizing that it was exceedingly becoming. He tore a tie and destroyed

ehemence, what purported to be a poem by Sir Walter Scott, Stefan, his forehead and hands damp with horror, could endure no more, and fled, pushing his way through the crowd at the door. He climbed to the deck and waited there, listening apprehensively. When the scattered applause warned h

that struck the very center of the notes, she began to sing. "Good girl, good girl!" he thought. For what she sang was neither sophisticated nor obvious-was indeed the only thing that could at once have satisfied him and pleased her audience. "Under the greenwood tree-" the notes came gay and sweet. Then, "Fear no more th

mounted beside her to the boat deck. Not until they stood side by si

t flaw. I can't tell you-

that you were plea

ct hour of moonrise on a calm and empty sea. The horizon was undefined. They seemed suspended in limitless ether, which the riding moon pierced with a swale of living brightness, like quicksilver. They heard nothing save the hidden throb and creak of the ship, myste

t he spoke. "You are the only woman who has ever reminded me of her, Mary. The only one whose be

ppy, and instantly her heart wrapped him about with protection. In that moment

ll names. Poets and painters have glorified it in every a

ed" (even as he spoke he marveled at himself that the word should come so nat

him, half fearful, yet exa

w her, Cytheria-like, shining above yet toward him. But her vision, leaning on his heart, was of those two still and cl