In a little while the lives of Mrs. Murray and Christine had settled into a calm routine of work and talk, and the simple recreations of reading and house-decorating which were the only ones that Christine ever seemed to think of. She never went out, and worked with as much application as Mrs. Murray would permit at the which, at her earnest request, the wise old lady had got for her. She and Christine had a frank and loving talk, in which one was as interested as the other, in Christine’s making her own living, and in which it was settled, to the joy of each, that their home in future was to be together. They were days of strange peace and calm for poor Christine, and her heart would with gratefulness for them, as she sat over her beautiful embroidery, which was in itself a pleasure to her.  
But the evenings were the best of all, for then Noel invariably came—sometimes to look in and say a bright and cheery word, on his way to keep an engagement, sometimes to give them the benefit of the bright stories and good things he had heard at a dinner, and sometimes to spend a whole long evening, talking, laughing and reading aloud from new magazines and books which he brought with him in abundance. These were the sorts of delights unknown to Christine before. She had read very little, and the world of delight that reading opened up to her was new, inspiring and . Noel read aloud his favorite poets, their two young hearts together, and their eyes alight with feeling at the passages which left the matured heart of Mrs. Murray undisturbed.
 
It had been in vain that Mrs. Murray had tried to induce Christine to sing. It occurred to her at last to put it in the light of a favor to herself, and when she told Christine that she loved music very dearly, and rarely had an opportunity to hear it, the girl went at once and played and sang for her, and then Mrs. Murray used the same argument—that of giving a friend pleasure—with regard to Noel. At first it was difficult and awkward, but before very long Christine and Noel were singing duets together, and music now became a part of their evening’s entertainment. How dull the evenings were when Noel did not come!—for sometimes there were engagements from which he could not escape. Mrs. Murray missed him much herself and it pleased her to be sure that Christine did also. Sometimes he would come late after a dinner, and if it were only a brief half-hour that he spent with them it made the evening seem a success, instead of a failure.
 
After a little while Mrs. Murray succeeded in inducing Christine to take walks with her along those quiet unfashionable streets, in the air of the late autumn afternoons. She would return from these expeditions so refreshed, with such a charming color in the fair, sweet face to which peace and love and protecting companionship had given an expression of new beauty, that Mrs. Murray would be half protesting at the thought that the people that passed it, in the street, were deprived of a sight of its loveliness by that close, thick veil, which it never seemed to occur to Christine to lay aside. It seemed an instinct with her, and her good friend felt hurt to the very heart when she thought what the instinct had its foundation in.
 
In proportion as the influence of these days and weeks brought peace and calm to Christine, to Noel they brought an excited restlessness. He was under the spell of the strongest feeling that he had ever known. All the circumstances of his with Christine, the difficult self-repression to which he had compelled himself so long, and the sudden sense of her freedom which made vigilance harder still—all these things together brought about in him a state of excitement that kept him continually on a strain. It was only in her presence that he was calm, because it was there that he recognized most the absolute need of calmness and self-control. Away from her, he sometimes rushed into rash resolves, as to a sort of wooing which he felt tremendously to, and in which he felt a power in him to succeed. He would even make deliberate plans, and imagine himself going to the house and insisting on seeing Christine alone, and then his thoughts would fairly fly along, uttering themselves in excited words that burned their way to Christine’s heart and melted it.
 
But when, in actuality, he would come to where she was, all these brave and manful purposes faded, like mist, before the commanding spell of her deep and solemn calm. She seemed so in her assured sense of his simple that he often thought she must have forgotten , in the excitement that followed, that he had offered her his heart and hand and name, or else that she was so convinced of the fact that it had been done in pity that she had never given it a second thought.
 
So , bewildered, overwrought did he become with all these thoughts that he forced himself to make some excuse and stay away from Christine. When at last he went again, it was late in the evening and his time, he knew, would be short. It was three days now since he had been, and his blood flowed quick with . He had thought of little else as he sat through the long dinner, eating the dishes set before him while he talked with a certain preoccupation to the beautiful débutante whom he had brought in, and who made herself her most fascinating for him, Noel being just the sort of man to represent such a girl’s ideal—older, graver, more finished in manner than herself, and of the still greater charm of being in all the mysteries of the great world, across whose threshold only she had seen. She was exceedingly pretty, and Noel was too much an artist not to be alive to it, but as he looked at the fair, unwritten page her face represented to him, he was seeing, in his mind’s eye, that far lovelier face on which the spiritualizing, beautifying hand of sorrow had been laid. He had not gone thus far on his journey of life without deep suffering himself, and the heart that had suffered was the one to which he felt his true kinship. At the close of the dinner the whole party to the opera, Noel alone excusing himself, at the door of the débutante’s carriage, on the plea of an important engagement. The lovely bud looked and disappointed, but Noel knew his place at her side would be abundantly filled, and got himself away with all the haste decorum permitted.
 
When he rang at Mrs. Murray’s door Harriet him into the little drawing-room where Christine was seated at the piano singing. Mrs. Murray was not present. Motioning the servant not to announce him he took his position behind a screen, where he could see and hear without being seen. Christine had heard neither his ring nor his entrance, so she was utterly unconscious of any presence but her own, and indeed most probably not of that, for there was a strange abandonment to sway of the song as her voice, rich and full and deep, sang softly:
 
 
“I am weary with rowing, with rowing,
Let me drift adown with the stream.
I am weary with rowing, with rowing,
Let me lay me down and dream.”
Noel knew the little song well, and in his fancy the full, pathetic voice gave it a sound and meaning that his heart desired to hear in it. The thrilling voice sang on, low and deep and full:
 
“The stream in its flowing, its flowing,
Shall bear us adown to the sea.
I am weary with rowing, with rowing,
I yield me to love and to thee.
I can struggle no longer, no longer,
Here in thine arms let me lie,
In thine arms which are stronger, are stronger
Than all on the earth, let me die.”
The sweet voice trembled as the song came to an end, and Christine, with a swift, movement, put her elbows on the keys of the piano, making a harsh of sound, and dropped her face in her hands. She remained so, without moving, for several minutes, while Noel, thrilling in all his senses to the power of that subtly sweet song, kept also profoundly still. He felt it was his only safety. If he had moved, it must have been to clasp her in his arms.
 
At last she rose to her feet and began to put the music in order. It was a moment when life, for each of them, seemed very hard. And yet, to one who looked and saw them so, it seemed as if the best that earth could offer might be theirs, and that they were made and fashioned to have and to enjoy it.
 
The pretty room was a soft glow of firelight and lamplight . The rich harmonies of dark color made by carpets, hangings and furniture were lighted here and there by an infinite number of the charming little things that are the perfecting touches of a tasteful room. A bunch of freshly-gathered autumn leaves was massed under the light from the shaded lamp. Near by sat Christine. She had taken up a strip of gorgeous embroidery in her hands, and was bending above it and trying hard to put her stitches in with care. To-night there was a steady flush in her cheeks that made her look more beautiful than he had ............