“What are you listening for!” she asked him once.

He answered her with a puzzle.

“For the Lorelei’s song,” he said, and going to the piano he sang it, his clear, plaintive tenor still retaining its power to make her nose smart and the dumb chills to run up and down her back.  She was sitting near the piano and when he was through, he turned around on the bench.

“Have you ever been the least bit sorry,” he asked, “that you turned me down—­for a business career?”

“I didn’t turn you down,” she said.  “We couldn’t agree on certain things:  that’s all.”

“On what, for instance?”

“That love is the one great thing in life, for instance.  You always said it was—­especially to a girl.  And I always said there were other things in a woman’s life, too—­that love shouldn’t monopolize her any more than it does a man.”

“You were wrong, Mary, and you know you were wrong.”

“I was right, Wally, and you know I was right.  Because, don’t you see?—­if love is the only thing in life, and love fails, a person’s whole life is in ruins—­and that isn’t fair—­”

“It’s true, though,” he answered, more to himself than to her.  Again he unconsciously assumed a listening attitude, as one who is trying to catch a sound from afar.

“Wally!” said Mary.  “What on earth are you listening for?”

Again it pleased him to answer her with a riddle.

“Italian opera,” he said; and turning back to the keyboard he began—­

“Woman is fickle
 False altogether
 Moves like a feather
 Borne on the breezes—­”

“Did you ever sing when you were flying?” she asked, trying to shake him out of his mood.

The question proved a happy one.  For nearly two hours they chatted and smiled and hummed old airs together—­that is to say, Wally hummed them and Mary tried, for, as you know, she couldn’t sing but could only follow the melody with a sort of a deep note far down in her throat, always pretending that she wasn’t doing it and shyly laughing when Wally nodded in encouragement and tried to get her to sing up louder.

“Eleven o’clock!” he exclaimed at last.  “That’s the first time in three months—­”

Whatever it was, he didn’t finish it, but when he bade her good-bye he said in a low voice, “Young lady, do you know that you played the very Old Ned with my life when you turned me down?”

But Mary wouldn’t follow him there, either.

“Good-bye, Wally,” she said, and just before he went down to his car, she saw him standing on the step, his face turned toward the drive as though still listening for that distant sound—­that sound which never came.

The riddle was solved the next morning.

Helen appeared at the office soon after nine and the moment she saw Mary she said, “Has Wally ’phoned you this morning?”

“No,” said Mary.

Her cousin looked relieved.