Not long after the others had driven away Esther found that it was quite impossible for her to take a nap as she had planned. She seemed to be growing more restless and fatigued with every moment spent upon the bed. Besides, had she not been indoors far too much recently, when they would so soon be going back to the city where only a comparatively small amount of outdoor life would be possible?

Esther did not stop to dress with any care; she merely fixed her hair and slipped a long brown coat over her dress, tying a light scarf about her hair. And because both Mrs. Ashton and Dick had insisted that no one of the three girls go any distance from home alone after Betty's misfortune, she wandered about idly in their small enclosed garden for a few moments and then sat down in Betty's empty steamer chair under their single tall linden tree. The light gusts of the October wind sent down little showers of curled-up yellow leaves and shriveled flowers upon her head and shoulders, until Esther, glancing up at them, smiled. When she dropped her eyes again she saw that Dick Ashton was on his way toward her along the short path from the gate. And he held a bundle of letters in his hand which he had stopped by the village post-office to secure. Two of them he dropped into Esther's lap and then sat down on the ground near her, sighing quite unconsciously.

"Are you all by yourself?" he inquired.

Esther nodded. "Yes, I did not feel like being polite to any one this afternoon. Betty told me to ask you to walk over and join them if you are not too tired."

"I am not too tired, yet I have not the remotest idea of going," Dick returned quietly. "Though I declare to you, Esther, that it seems to me if Betty really does care for this German fellow, it will be about the last straw."

Always if you had asked Esther Crippen's friends what they considered the dominant trait of her character the answer would have been "sympathy." So now, observing Richard Ashton's anxiety and depression, she almost entirely forgot her own.

"The last straw, Dr. Ashton?" she repeated. And then smiling and yet wholly gentle she asked, "Why do you say 'the last straw' in such a desperate fashion? Surely things are not going so wrong with you! If you feel so dreadfully unhappy over leaving Betty and your mother behind, why you know I don't wish to be selfish. Take them with you; I shall manage somehow."

Leaning over, Dick Ashton touched Esther's hand lightly with his lips in such a friendly, kindly fashion that the girl did not flush or draw it away.

"Who says that I am so desperate over leaving mother and the Princess to take care of our future great American prima donna?" he asked half-joking and half-serious.

The girl's brows drew together in her effort to understand and appreciate her friend's real meaning. "Why, I don't see what else there can be to make you unhappy," she replied thoughtfully. "You are going back to your own country, which you know you have learned to care more for with each year that you have spent away from it. And you are going to commence the practice of the profession you have always loved since you were a child. But of course if there is anything else that is worrying you which I have not the right to know, I don't want you to think that I am trying to make you confide in me. I can sympathize with you without understanding."

"Then you have a very rare and wonderful gift, Esther," Dick Ashton replied. "But please read your letters and don't consider me."

Slowly the girl read a letter from her father, which besides its interest in her work was so full of bits of Woodford interest and gossip that she felt herself growing sharply homesick. Then, tucking this letter inside her dress, to re-read to her sister later, Esther slowly opened the one from her music master in Berlin. It was just what she had expected. Professor Hecksher felt that she might have a future in grand opera, only she was far too young and too untrained to attempt it for several years. So she must stay on in Germany, working unceasingly with him until they could both understand more thoroughly her capabilities.

Esther let this single sheet of paper slip out of her hand to the ground, where Dick picked it up, returning it to her. But not before he had recognized the master's handwriting and letter head.

"It is all right, isn't it?" he queried, surprised at the girl's expression.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," she replied, not looking at him but at a far stretch of country with her eyes and of years with her mind. "Only I expect I am what both Betty and Polly think me, an ungrateful and unreasonable person with no ambition and no imagination."

Dick was silent for a moment and then answered, "No, Esther, I do not believe you appreciate what a great gift you have; you are too modest and care too little for the applause most of the people in the world are willing to sacrifice everything for."

Richard Ashton turned his serious dark eyes upward toward the tall, pale girl sitting in the chair near him. "Esther," he said, "I want to tell you, to make you believe what a great gift you have. I love you, and more than anything on earth I want you to be my wife. The other day when Anthony Graham came with the news from Woodford that Betty had inherited a small fortune I was happier than I can ever tell you. And it was not for Betty's sake or even mother's; it was a selfish happiness. For then I believed that both you and I were released from our first duty to them and that I had the right to tell you that I cared for you and meant to try and make you love me. Then came the night of your concert, when I heard you sing. And since then, Esther, I have realized that I have no right to ask you to give up the career that is before you and to ask you to share my uncertain future. For with my work I could not follow yours and my profession is the one thing I have learned. I had not meant to tell you this, but, after all, Esther, I don't know why I should not. A girl can never be hurt by knowing that a man loves her."

And for the second time Dick kissed Esther's hand and then turned his face away.

The next moment the girl had risen from her chair. "Dr. Ashton, will you take a walk with me?" she asked. "I am tired sitting here."

Then, without referring to what had just been said between them, the girl and man walked along, talking quietly of other things until they came to the stream of water sheltered by trees, with a rim of hills along the other side. Away from the possibility of being interrupted Esther stopped, putting her hand on her companion's arm.

She did not look like her usual self; her face was flooded with color and her shyness and reserve for the moment seemed swept away.

"You were not fair to me just now," she declared. "You had not the right to tell me you cared for me without asking me what my feeling was for you. Why does everybody in the world think that because I have a talent I have to sacrifice my whole life to it? I love my music, but I don't wish to be an opera singer. I hate the kind of existence it forces one to lead. I want a home of my own and some one to care for me. Why do people nowadays think that girls are so changed, that all of us are wishing to be independent and famous? Why, it was because our old Camp Fire club taught us that all the best things of life are centered about the hearth fire that means home, that I first cared for it so much. I wonder if any one realizes because I was brought up in an orphan asylum and then lived with other people that I have never had a home of my own in my life. But of course this would not count, Dick, if I did not care for you more than I do for my music, or even for Betty. Tell me, then, is it my duty to go on with my work in Berlin, to give up everything I wish for a career I don't desire?" And here, overcome by the rush of her own feelings and her own words, Esther ceased speaking, feeling her old stupid, nervous trembling seize her.

But Richard Ashton's arms were about her, holding her still.

"The most perfect home that my love can make for you, Esther, shall be yours so long as we live. And there are other ways where the gift of a beautiful voice may bring pleasure and reward outside of the life you dread."