to her and said:

'Angela, do you remember me?'

'Yes, sir,' she replied, her dark face lighting up with a gleam of
recognition.

'Do you know what day this is?'

'It is the morning of my father's death--how should I forget it?'

'You refused to sing on the day of his sentence--can you find heart,
then, to do so in this dreadful hour?'

The dirty little fingers fluttered nervously over the music-strings--as
the creative hand might do with a human heart of whose destiny there
was a doubt. For an instant a pang of agony wreathed the young face to
the depth of its expressions, but she resumed her sorrowful complacency
immediately.

'I am singing to my mother across the sea,' she said, quietly.

"Then, resuming her guitar, she swept out a yet more plaintive air, and
lifted her young, shrill voice in song. The crowd around her did not
increase, the interest was not enhanced, and the chary pennies of
approbation were as few as before. But to me there was a wild, desolate
melancholy in the melody that fell so unheedingly upon the ears of the
crowd. They did not see nor hear what I did. They merely saw a dusky
foreign girl using her voice for a scanty livelihood. I saw a patient,
suffering, religious spirit, singing out its agony to a kindred spirit