THE TRUTH ABOUT

TOLNA

TH

HE wedding-march safely established Elsa and her bridegroom in the center of the stage. Denys Alden, watching from the wing as anxiously as if he had made the match, allowed his furrowed brow to smooth. Still half afraid to release the singers from his hypnotic eye, he yet turned toward the vast auditorium.

Even in its semi-darkness the glitter of jewels traced the two great horseshoes of boxes, while, as the listeners in the orchestra chairs stirred with the sweep and passion of the music, jewels flashed out and paled again, like an army of fireflies. Not a seat in the house was empty. Not an auditor but listened as if never before had the meaning of music been made manifest.

Denys drew the deep breath of satisfaction, frowning ferociously the while as his keen gaze failed to discover, in the cavernous twilight, the happy spot where She was sitting. For he knew that until She shared his triumph it was not really his, and the footlights stretched before him like a flaming sword, beyond which he might not even look. Defiantly he turned his back on the stage; then resolutely stopped, caught and held by the habit of years; then trampled the habit of years under his hurrying feet.

A lightly built, firm-knitted, slender creature, graceful, restless, quick of movement, eager of speech, his blue eyes burning vividly under the shadow of long black hair, he burst into the Burnham box with the suddenness of a stage imp shot from a trap. Mr. Burnham, taking his comfortable habitual nap in a back corner, habitually left the duties of hospitality to that alert young woman, Mrs. Burnham, who greeted the visitor with a flash of eyes and teeth and diamonds; the rest, silence. So long as it was fashionable to talk during the music, Mrs. Nortie's ready tongue was never still. But when good form said, "Mum's the word," tortures could not have dragged a syllable from those determined lips. Even the young

billionaire beside her was made to wait till, as he put it, "this row 's over," before she would discuss the dinner which she had agreed to chaperon, where he would personate the Warden of Sing Sing, and his guests would march in, in lockstep, wearing numbers and stripes. Slipping past these obstacles, none of whom he regarded as in any proper sense human beings, Denys stood by the chair of Mrs. Fanning, Mr. Burnham's sister.

"Why, Denys," she whispered in surprise, "I thought you never left the wings."

"But you were never before in the audience, Aunt Alice."

The young girl leaning, absorbed, over the box-rail started at the sound of his low voice, and turned to him.

"Oh, Mr. Alden, the half was not told me."

Mrs. Fanning began a sentence. With a disregard too unconscious to be rude, Denys dropped into the empty chair beside her daughter.

"Miss Fanning, you are really pleased?" "You did not half prepare me."

"I was afraid. I dared not boast lest you be disappointed."

"Disappointed? I don't know whether I am on the solid earth."

"I know that I am in heaven. To have feel as I do!"

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She dropped her eyes before his ardent gaze, then looked at him again with an earnestness that overcame her hesitation.

"Mr. Alden, I-I don't want to rush in where angels fear to tread, but-does to-night atone to you for your own calamity?"

"My calamity?" he echoed. "Oh, you mean the failure of my singing-voice?"

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The girl laughed gently. "I am answered, you don't even remember your misfortune. Mother told me that, at the time, you called the loss of your career the 'Great Renunciation.""

"It was rather a tragedy then," he conceded. "You see, though my mother gave up her profession when she married, she made our home a very heaven of music. I never had a wish or an expectation but to follow in her footsteps. My father wished it, too, in a sort of passionate loyalty to her memory and an understanding of all that she had given up for him. And I did have the voice, and the temperament, and a tremendous power of work, and a love of art that was- Oh, well! You know how it happened.. Over-training broke my voice, as I could snap the stem of that rose