He smiled.  “At the garden none has, so far, made complaint about my playing,” he said slowly, “except that I am not quite willing, sometimes, to play the music they seem best to like.”  He would not have told her all the details of his battles against rag-time, for the world.  “It is music of the negroes, Anna.  Er—­er—­syncopation.  Ach! What syncopation!  All right in its place, my dear, but a whole evening of it!  Ach, drives me—­it grows tiresome, Anna.”

“Some day, father, you will not play there,” she said with emphasis.  “Some day will come fortune to us—­some day.”

“Yes; perhaps; some day.  But there is something finer than a fortune, Anna.  I have been thinking, thinking, thinking, lately, of your mother, Anna.  How delighted she would be to see you, now, with your dark hair!  Why, Anna, it is almost black!  So delighted she would be!  It was blonde when you were born—­blonde, fair like mine, before mine turned to white; but hers was dark, as yours is now, and I think that when she saw that yours was light she was a little disappointed till her old nurse told her that in early years her own hair had been as yours was.  You were one year old, my Anna, before your hair began to show the brown.”

“Do you like it, father?”

“Like it?  Ah, I love it!  But—­I am worried.”

“Worried?”

“Yes.  Always in the past have I been with you.  Now you are alone and beautiful.  And of life you know so little, while of love—­you know—­ah, nothing!”

Anna was not sure of this.  She had been wondering, indeed, if she did not know much of it.  It startled her to have her father speak of it.  There had been tremors in her heart, hot flushes in her cheeks, dim mists before her eyes when she had thought about young Vanderlyn, of which she was suspicious—­very.  No; she was by no means sure that she knew nothing about love—­but she did not say this to her father.  Instead she pressed her dark head closer to his thick white mane.

“Love!” said she.  “It is such a pretty word.  Tell me something of it, father.”

He smiled down at her.  “Ah, you have some interest!  Well, I tell you.”  Into his old eyes there came the deep and happy glow of reminiscence of bright days.  She knew the look—­always was it in them when he was thinking of her mother and never was it in them at any other time.

“Love,” said he, “it is life’s spring-time.  Ah, your mother, Anna!  Your dear mother!  It is the splendor and the glory of the dawn.”  The old man’s head was back, his eyes were closed and on his face there was a singularly sweet and simple smile, more like that of a youth than that of one whose years stretch far behind him.  “It is the light that falls from heaven and turns this grim old world into a paradise.  It is the hand of fate that grips the heart till we must follow—­follow.  We cannot hold back, my Anna; I could not hold back, your lovely mother, she could not hold back.  Ah, one must