hours wrong, the spangled cobwebs in the grass and the other spangles, changed to faint iridescence in the enchanted light as Isabel came toward him and into his open arms. Could marble respond to a lover's passion, could dead lips answer with love for love, then Isabel might have yielded to him at least a tolerant tenderness. He saw her now, alien and apart, like some pale star that shone upon a barren waste, but never for him.

Another phrase, full of love and longing, floated up the stairway and entered his room, a guest unbidden.

[Illustration: musical notation.]

He turned to the nurse. "Ask Miss Bernard to come up for a few minutes, will you?"

"Do you think it's wise?" she temporised.

"Please ask her to come up," he said, imperatively. "Must I call her myself?"

So Rose came up, after receiving the customary caution not to stay too long and avoid everything that might be unpleasant or exciting.

She stood for a moment in the doorway, hesitating. Her face was almost as white as her linen gown, but her eyes were shining with strange fires.

"White Rose," he said, wearily, "I have been through hell."

"I know," she answered, softly, drawing up a chair beside him. "Aunt Francesca and I have wished that we might divide it with you and help you bear it."

He stretched a trembling hand toward her and she took it in both her own. They were soft and cool, and soothing.

"Thank you for wanting to share it," he said. "Thank you for coming, for playing--for everything."

"Either of us would have come whenever you wanted us, night or day."

"Suppose it was night, and I'd wanted you to come and play to me. Would you have come?"

"Why, yes. Of course I would!"

"I didn't know," he stammered, "that there was so much kindness in the world. I have been very lonely since--"

Her eyes filled and she held his hand more closely. "You won't be lonely any more. I'll come whenever you want me, night or day, to play, to read--or anything. Only speak, and I'll come."

"How good you are!" he murmured, gratefully. "No, please don't let go of my hand." In some inexplicable fashion strength seemed to flow to him from her.

"I think you'll be glad to know," she said, "how sympathetic everybody has been. Strangers stop us on the street to ask for you, and people telephone every day. Down in the library, there's a pile of letters that would take days to read, and many of them have foreign stamps. It makes one feel warm around the heart, for it brings the ideal of human brotherhood so near."

He sighed and his face looked haggard. The brotherhood of man was among the things that did not concern him now. The weariness of the ages was in every line of his body.

"I have been thinking," he went on, after a little, "what a difference one little hour can make, a minute, even. Once I had everything--youth, health, strength, a happy home, love, a dear father, and every promise of success in my chosen career. Now I'm old and broken; health, strength, and love have been taken away in an instant, my father is gone, and my career is only an empty memory. I have no violin, and, if I had, what use would it be to me without--why Rose, I haven't even fingers to make the notes nor hands to hold it."

Rose could bear no more. She sprang to her feet with arms outstretched, all her love and longing swelling into infinite appeal. "Oh Boy!" she cried, "take mine! Take my hands, for always!"

For a tense instant they faced each other. Her breast rose and fell with every quick breath; her eyes met his, then faltered, and the crimson of shame mantled her white face.

"Oh," she breathed, painfully, and turned away from him. When she was half way to the door, he called to her. "Rose! Dear Rose!"

She hesitated, her hand upon the knob. "Close the door and come back," he pleaded. "Please--oh, please!"

Trembling from head to foot, she obeyed him, but her face was pitiful. She could not force herself to look at him. "Forgive," she murmured, "and forget."

The hand he took in his was cold, but her nearness gave him comfort, as never before. His heart was unspeakably tender toward her.

"Rose," he went on, softly, "I've been too near the other world not to have the truth now. Tell me what you mean! Make me understand!"

She did not answer, nor even lift her eyes. She breathed hard, as though she were in pain.

"Rose," he said again, tightening his clasp upon the hand she tried to draw away, "did you mean that you would be my--"

"In name," she interrupted, throwing up her head proudly. "Just to help you--that was all."

He drew her hand to his hot lips and kissed it twice. "Oh, how divinely kind you are," he whispered, "even to think of stooping to such as I!"

"Have pity," she said brokenly, "and let me go."

"Pity?" he repeated. "In all the world there is none like yours. To think of your being willing to sacrifice yourself, through pity of me!"

The blood came back into her heart by leaps and bounds. She had not utterly betrayed herself, then, since he translated it thus.

"Listen," he was saying. "I cared--terribly, but it's gone, and my heart is empty. It's like an open grave, waiting for something that does not come. Did you ever care?"

"Yes," she answered, with eyes downcast.

"Did you care for someone who did not care for you?"

"Yes," she replied, again.

"And he never knew?"

"No." The word was almost a whisper.

"He must have been a brute, not to have cared. Was it long ago?"

"Not very."

"Have I ever met him?"

The suggestion of an ironical smile hovered for a moment around her pale lips, then vanished. "No."

"I have no right to--to ask his name."

"No. What difference does a name make?"

"None. Could you never bring yourself to care for anyone else?"

"No," she breathed. "Oh, no!"

"And yet, with your heart as empty as mine you still have pity enough to--"

"To serve you," she answered. Her eyes met his clearly now. "To help you--as your best friend might."

"Rose, dear Rose! You give me new courage, but how can I let you sacrifice yourself for me?" "Believe me," she said diffidently, "there is no question of sacrifice. Have you never thought of what you might do, that would be even better than the career you had planned?"

"Why, no. What could I do, without--"

"Write," she said, with her eyes shining. "Let others play what you write. Immortality comes by way of the printed page."

"I couldn't," he returned, doubtfully.

"I never composed anything except two or three little things that I never dared to play, even for encores."

"Never say you can't. Say 'I must,' and 'I will.'"

"You're saying them for me. You almost make me believe in myself."

"That's the very best of beginnings, isn't it?"

She was quite calm now, outwardly, and she drew her hand away. Allison remembered the long, happy hours they had spent together before Isabel came into his life. Now that she was gone, the old comradeship had returned, the sweeter because of long absence. Rose had never fretted nor annoyed him; she seemed always to understand.

"You don't know how glad I'd be," he sighed, "to feel that I wasn't quite out of it--that there was something in life for me still. I didn't want to be a bit of driftwood on the current of things."

"You're not going to be--I won't let you. Haven't you learned that sometimes we have to wait; that we can't always be going on? Just moor your soul at the landing place, and when the hour comes, you'll swing out into the current again. Much of the driftwood is only craft that broke away from the landing."

He smiled, for her fancy pleased him. An abiding sense of companionship crept into his loneliness; his isolation seemed to be shared. "And you'll stay at the landing with me," he whispered, "until the time comes to set sail again?"