"We artists have to be unconventional," frankly said the Magyar beauty.

"I await Madame Raffoni here for a little tour of the wonderful
New York shops."

It was a natural passage from the picture to the memories of the
Danube, and then, under the kindling glances of the diva, Randall
Clayton talked, with spirit, of his happy summer ramblings through
Austria and Hungary.

Irma Gluyas' magnetic eyes burned into his soul as she followed the young stranger in his itinerary. It was only when the maître d'hôtel entered, announcing Madame Raffoni as in waiting in her carriage, that Randall Clayton's castle in Spain came crashing down around him.

The Magyar witch dropped her eyes when Clayton took her hands in adieu. "You have made me forget time, and my workaday world," he said. "I have now something to live for—to hear you sing! It seems so hard to meet only to part. I may never see your coming picture; you may never see mine again. But I cannot lose you from my life. It seemed, Fräulein Irma," he said, earnestly, "when I first met the glance of your dreaming eyes, that I had known you in some other world."

"I receive no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to be mute, parôle d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience. I must keep an artist's faith with my manager."

"I shall have the loge d'honneur at your début," enthusiastically cried Clayton, as he lingered over her frankly extended hand after murmuring his acceptance.

The woman who sat, with her head bowed upon her hands, listened to his rece