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out paying for it. There was a pause, and a slight confusion of tongues; the two ladies in the balcony looked on with interest.

“What are they going to do next?” exclaimed Carrie, feeling that she ought to be at the helm. “What on earth are they bringing that old spinning-wheel of grandmother’s on the stage for? Oh, I see! She is going to do Marguerite for us. How delightful!”

Alice said afterwards she did not know what had possessed her, but she was wound up to the proper dramatic pitch; and when she came back to the stage, a white cashmere thrown over her rich dress, her hair let down, and one or two hasty toilet touches transforming her from the modern ball-room young lady into the simple love-stricken heroine of the poem, she felt as real—more real and more at home, indeed—in her assumed character than in all her previous gaiety. Her companion began to play the low, melancholy opening accompaniment (she had chosen Schubert’s beautiful conception of the song), and a flute-player from the musicians standing beside the piano added a few liquid notes in obligato. Alice sat down to the spinning-wheel in the attitude she had often rehearsed with her stage teacher, and, like a girl in a dream, began to sing very softly in the intensely