As Victoria began to play, the people felt a thrill of emotion as distinct and real as a shock from an electric battery. She had been playing now in London for two weeks. Every performance added to her popularity. Even in that great brick and mortar wilderness where every variety of music and every representative of the best in music and art and literature could be found daily and nightly for the pleasure seeker, Victoria held a place all her own.

Never had she played as she did tonight after the news of Victor's arrest and imprisonment. She come upon the stag with a great cry in her soul for help, for comfort, for consolation. The blow had come to her so suddenly she had not time to understand all its meaning. The minute she touched her instrument she seemed to ask it to satisfy her longing for deliverance. It breathed prayer for Victor and for herself. It sang to her hope and future peace. It is doubtful it during the ten minutes she was playing on that occasion Victoria was conscious of a soul in the world except herself and the spirit of the music. The selection happened to be exactly in keeping with her troubled mood. But even if it had not been, it is probable she would have played anything with the same spirit of desire. No one but a music lover could understand what all this meant and the audience contained hundreds of beating sympathetic hearts that entered into the performance without knowing what occasioned it.

Victoria walked off the stage like a person in her sleep and as she disappeared the perfect silence was broken by applause so hearty and continuous that all the players and singers behind the scenes caught it up and Victoria in the saddest moment of her life was surrounded by the greatest expression of admiration and delight she had ever heard. She paid no attention, however. Her attitude was listless and depressed. She sat down and made no movement to go on again, although the demand for her reappearance grew more and more urgent.

The manager, who had been out during the first part of the program, had come in just in time to hear Victoria. He was astonished at her performance. He now came up to her and said,

"Miss Stanwood, the audience will not be satisfied after that unless you go on again."

Victoria looked up and replied, "I cannot go on again. I am not well." Instantly her mind had gone back to the first concert when she and Victor had made their first public appearance and she had refused to reply to an encore because the audience had not called Victor back. She felt in the same attitude now, only from a far different reason. She had played all she could that evening. She felt as if she could never touch her violin again. And if she had known that her connection with the company would cease that very moment she would not have gone before the audience again the evening.

The manager instantly saw that something was wrong. Victoria had always been extremely courteous and gracious to her audience and her refusal to appear now was due to something serious.

"Are you ill?" the manager asked quickly.

"Yes, yes, I cannot play any more." Victoria drew off into a corner of the green room and sat with her face in her hands. Some of the concert company gathered around her while the manager stepped out upon the stage. At sight of him the applause ceased.

"Ladies and gentlemen," announced the manager, "Miss Stanwood had been suddenly taken ill. I regret that she cannot appear again this evening."

There was many expressions of regret from the audience but the concert drew to a close and Victoria did not come on again.

Next day at her hotel in the presence of the manager and his wife, Victoria told them the news that she had received concerning Victor. The morning papers contained the same account, with the additional item that the officer who was wounded while making the arrest was in a critical condition. There were also some details concerning the forgery. The amount forged was two thousand dollars and the manager of the New Concert Hall was the loser to that amount, as Victor before his arrest had lost the entire sum in gambling.

Victoria was in an agony of shame and trouble, but the matter was public now and she talked it over with the manager with little attempt to conceal her real feelings. After all, she was highly emotional, though not nervous or hysterical.

"Two thousand dollars is a good sized sum for a boy like that to get away with so soon." said the manager.

"He gambles." Victoria said the words with a shudder. The manager had guessed as much, long before. He appeared very thoughtful over something but said little.

Victoria closed her London engagement that night and looked forward with relief to the trip on the continent. The company went over to Paris and it was while there that news came in fragmentary ways of Victor's trial and conviction. The wounded man recovered. Victor was spared the charge of murder in addition to forgery. The sentence was for three years and Victoria wondered if her brother would not kill himself or commit some dreadful act before he would allow them to put him into the prison garb. It seemed so horrible to her she could not believe it. It was not until long after that she learned how Victor had gone down so fast. The recital of it in detail would be a story by itself. She wrote to him after he was in prison. She never received replies. The chaplain, who at that time was a man of great good sense and knowledge of human nature, wrote her once or twice concerning him. There was little to say. Victor was strangely quite and made no trouble. The chaplain said that in response to Victoria's desire to come and see him when she returned to America, Victor had not expressed either willingness or refusal to see her.

So Victoria with the sorrow of her life borne in the agony of self restraint went on with her work, and music was her salvation. Paris was a delight to her. Berlin also. There were wonderful things to be seen in those cities. With all her sight seeing she continued true to her custom of visiting on every occasion the needy and suffering souls in the hospitals and asylums of those cities. The French and German hospitals for incurables heard the best music that had been heard for many years and many a foreign tongue in the long white wards blessed the little figure in black as it quietly and lovingly bent over the instrument and made it do its wonderful work of soothing nervous pains of lifting the depressed mind into a heaven of relief. Victoria always thought she played better in a hospital than anywhere else. It is certain that there was a quality about it that was lacking in her brilliant playing before great or fashionable audiences. Ugo Bassi has said that "God's angels watch over the strong and well while they sleep, but God himself watches at the bed side of the suffering souls who lie awake from pain." So Victoria seemed to give more of herself to the weak and sorrowful than to the powerful and happy.

After the return to London and a successful season there, the company sailed for New York. Victoria's reputation was well established and the manager on the way home made her a proposition to become a member of a permanent symphony orchestra to be established and located in Chicago. The terms were liberal beyond Victor's asking and she rejoiced as she accepted them at the thought that she could have a home with her father and perhaps recover him, under new and better home surroundings, from his degradation.

But there was one duty before her which she must perform before she went back to her old home. She must go and see Victor. The anticipation of that visit to the State Prison haunted her all through the ocean trip. Every day as the vessel swung through its invisible ocean track, unerringly pointing its bow towards the western continent, Victoria sat looking out over the mysterious deep of changing color and movement and she could not shut out the sight of Victor in the dress of a felon. She could not forget the vanity of the boy that had always shown itself in refinements of apparel. And she could not help believing that one of the most exquisite tortures to a mind like Victor's must be, not the shame of having committed a felony, but the shame of wearing the clothing of a common convict.

When the voyage was over, Victoria at once made her arrangements to go out to the prison. She reached the place on Saturday and at once went to the warden's office and made known her errand.

The chaplain was present and was struck at once with the sight of the face and manner of the little woman whose name had become known so well in the musical world. He at once told her very frankly all he knew about Victor.

"To tell you the exact truth, Miss Stanwood, I am puzzled to know what to say about your brother. He gives no trouble but he will not talk. I doubt if he will want to see you."

"Not see me!" Victoria controlled herself with difficulty. "Does he think I love him any less for his--"

"I do not know, but whenever I have tried to mention your name or have given him your letters he has been as cold and unfeeling outwardly as a piece of stone."

"O Victor! Victor!" Victoria cried. She sat there in the warden's office where so much that was sinful and heartbreaking had come in and gone out all the years, and her cry of anguish went to add its burden to the rest. The chaplain was deeply moved.

"Go and tell him I want to see him! He is my brother. We were so close to each other once."

The chaplain went into the prison and was gone a long time. Victoria waited for him in the office. She thought he would never come back. Finally he returned with a grave and sorrowful look on his sympathetic face.

"Miss Stanwood, your brother refuses to see you. He says he would sooner die than have you look upon him. I received permission to let him come clothed in citizen's clothes, but he declares he will not see you under any circumstances."

Victoria received the news in silence. Then she said faintly, "I must go without seeing him. Tell him I love him as always. Sometime he will know that. He--"

She was going out when the chaplain suddenly spoke again.

"Miss Stanwood, I know something of your disappointment and sorrow at this. It is possible that he may relent or change. Cannot you wait over Sunday?"

Victoria hesitated.

"I will do as you think best. Of course I will wait if there is any possibility."

The chaplain thoughtfully looked at her. "I have a request to make of you then, Miss Stanwood. It may seem bold and unfeeling at this time, but of course I know of your custom in playing on Sunday at the hospitals and asylums. Could you--would it be asking what you cannot do, to play at our services tomorrow?"

Victoria looked up with a flush of emotion.

"Will Victor be present then?"

"Yes, he sings in the chapel choir. That is one of the strange things about his case. I do not think he has spoken a word to any inmate of the prison in all the time he has been here. But from the beginning he has sung. The doctor, who has made a special study of his case, says it is the one thing that has kept him from going insane. I do not know. It is very peculiar."

Victoria replied simply, "Yes, I will play." She was a possibility of touching Victor. Her longing to see him and tell him her love for him was greater than any other feeling. Besides, Victoria had never allowed her own troubles or sorrows to hinder her use of the instrument for other people's comfort. She was never selfish in her troubles.

So the next afternoon Victoria came upon the chapel platform with the chaplain and sat down just as the prisoners were filing in to their seats. There was a row of Chrysanthemums on the platform and behind it the slender figure of Victoria was almost hidden, but she could see better than she was seen, and she watched the prisoners with a fascination that was horrible to her. The men marched in by squads and took their places very quietly. There were nearly a thousand of them. It was a terrible sight to her to think of all that life, most of it under forty years of age, stamped with the curse of banishment from the world for the transgression of man's law and God's will. She could not keep her eyes off the place where the choir sat, which was a little gallery almost opposite the chaplain's platform and screened by a curtain drawn part way up. When the prisoners below were all seated, a dozen men walked into the little gallery. Victoria shut her eyes and sank down, then she opened them and looked. At the distance across the chapel, which was an immense room, she could not distinguish Victor's face at first. Then she saw him seated as fat apart from the others as possible. His eyes were gazing down and during the entire service, which began at once, he did not once raise them. Evidently he did not know that Victoria was there. The chaplain had not told any one for reasons of his own.

After a brief sermon the choir rose to sing. It was a remarkable performance even to Victoria, who had heard the best music abroad. The men's voices were well trained, and if lacking in technical skill, still were sympathetic and well balanced. Victor's voice was clear and sweet as ever. But it was not until a solo part was taken up by him that Victoria realized the wonderful quality of tone power possessed by him. The hardened, brutal, stolid faces, nearly a thousand of them down there, representing almost every crime on the calendar, began to soften. As Victor sang on, some of the men bowed their heads on the rail in front of them. Others, older men, sat bolt upright with no attempt to conceal or brush away the tears that rolled over their coarse, crime-stained faces. Truly John King was right when he said, "What a pity! What a pity! That such power should be so abused by not being consecrated!" And Victor was certainly conscious of his supremacy over the emotions of those sinful men. Perhaps that was the motive that ruled his singing there every Sunday. The old vanity lived in him strongly yet, in spite of his shame.

It was certainly an inspiration on Victoria's part that the instant the choir had finished and sat down she arose and began to play. It was the place in the service for her but she had not arranged to begin as she did until she caught the idea from the selection given by the choir. It was an anthem familiar to her, and the choir had given but one part of it, closing with Victor's solo and a brief refrain by all the voices. Upon the last note of this refrain Victoria began and with her own interpretation of the remainder of the music she swept on into a strain of perfect harmony, strong, pure, sustained. It was almost as if an angel chorus had suddenly appeared to preach to these lost, sinful men the tidings of forgiveness and eternal peace.

With the first note of the violin Victor had started up. He at once sat down again. His face trembled. He shook like one with the ague. Then he sat straight up and looked before him, every semblance of life driven out of his deathly look. The music poured out over the heads of those lost souls in the pit below him and every time the bow swept over the strings it seemed to tear his heart out of his bosom. Finally, he could bear it no longer. He started to his feet, stretched out his arms over the railing and cried out with a voice that was like the cry of a lost angel speaking from the borders of hell up to the ramparts of paradise--

"Victoria! Victoria!"

The bow fell all across the violin as the music broke and Victoria standing there with a sob in her heart and the tear on her cheek, oblivious of every one except her brother, cried out to him across that living gulf of sin that separated them, "Victor! Victor! I love you!"

Back in the little gallery there was an instant commotion as Victor staggered and then fell forward in a faint over the railing. The chaplain dismissed the prisoners, who had sat in astonished emotion during this brief but sensational scene. With Victoria he went at once to the side of Victor. He was unconscious. They bore him into the prison hospital and that Sunday evening found Victoria sitting at the bedside of that erring soul as he lay in stupor. He lay with his eyes closed and face turned towards the wall. And Victoria sat there praying that God would give him back to her. The doctor and the chaplain both came in several times before midnight. Near that time, while Victoria was left alone with him and no one else was within hearing distance, Victor suddenly turned and seized his sister's hand.

"Vi," he whispered, "I an a lost soul. I am living in hell already. It is no use. I can't be saved. I have suffered the tortures of the damned already."

"Hush, hush, Victor! God is good."

"Not in this place. There is no God here. Nor anywhere."

Victoria leaned over and laid her cheek against Victor's. She could not talk. She could not pray. She did what was the only thing left her to do. She made Victor feel her love for him.

He grew quiet and slept after awhile. In the morning he was sufficiently recovered to be able to go back into his cell. He insisted on this although the doctor said he might remain in the hospital. He parted with Victoria with more emotion than he had yet shown. "I shall die here," he said as he let Victoria kiss him. "Or go mad. I almost did yesterday."

"Tell me, Victor!" cried Victoria as she clung to him sobbing, "Do you love me?"

"Yes," said Victor, but no tear revealed any emotion. "Yes, Vi, but my heart is dead. It will be better for you when my body goes with it."

"No, no, Victor, you are young. You have a gift of God. You must live in hope." She gave him one last kiss and embrace and he left her there, and with a heavy heart she went on her way to her father. Ah! Sinful passion of the soul of man! What desolation is wrought by the selfishness of one disobedient heart! Truly the wages of sin is death. And it is a death that lays its ruin on the dearest and the fairest and most tender objects of our affection.

The question class at John Kin's came in on the Monday night that had been the date for the sentences on the worse or better condition of the world, with a good deal of curiosity to hear the result of the week's thought on the question, "Is the world growing better or worse?" According to the minister's direction five of the class were to bring a sentence each, to prove that the world was growing worse, and five others to bring one sentence each to prove that it was growing better.

"I have the sentences all here in my hand and I will read them now before we take up the other questions," john King said. "I will read the worse questions first. You remember the young women furnished this side of the answers to the questions."

1. The world is growing worse because woman suffrage was defeated at the last general election. "That," commented John King with his usual good nature, "Is what might truly be called a woman's reason."

2. The world is growing worse because there are more diseases known to medical science than there were ever before and especially in what is called civilization.

3. The world is growing worse because the love of money was never so widespread as it is today.

"How does she know that?" asked Tom.

"Please excuse the interruption," continued John King. "I did not mean it."

The class laughed at Tom's expense and King went on.

4. The world is growing worse because crime and criminals are steadily on the increase in the best country on the globe, that is, in the United States.

5. The world is growing worse because that is what it must do, to fulfill the prophecies of the Bible, which declare that wicked men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.

"Now for the other side as presented by the young men."

1. The world is growing better because it contains every year more hospitals and asylums for the sick and sinful and unfortunate.

2. The world is growing better because human life is of longer average duration than ever before.

"How does he know that?" asked Miss Fergus.

"I got it out of a dictionary of scientific facts," replied Tom.

"That settles it," said John King gravely, and he went right on.

4. The world is growing better because the differences between nations are now settled by arbitration, which used to be settled by war.

5. The world is growing better because Christianity is a historical fact, and if there are not more good men and good things in the world than formerly, Christ's life and teachings must be a failure, and that in the nature of things, is impossible.

"Now then, there you are," quoth John King. "Next week suppose we take a vote on the merits of these arguments. We must pass on to the questions now, as our time is brief."

Question.- "How much of a man's income ought he to spend for his own personal pleasure?"

"Whatever is necessary for the development and growth of a child of God. This is a hard question to answer for another person as well as for ourselves. There are some large principles to go by. We are never justified in spending money for personal pleasures that make us more selfish or forgetful of the world's needs. Only those pleasures are right and harmless that leave us better fitted in body, mind, and soul at advance the Kingdom of God. On that great general principle we must work our own details conscientiously."

Question. - "Is it right to be pleased with one's own good looks?"

"Yes, I think so. Pleased, but not vain. A person can be happy to think he has a good straight body free from disease or disfigurement. That is a natural feeling and no harm in it. But when it comes to standing before a mirror and admiring ourselves, if that is what you mean, I should say it was done a good deal, but I don't know of any good to come of it."

Question. "Suppose the man who lives next to me is five hundred dollars in debt through no fault of his own, is sick and unable to work and has a large family. Suppose I am in good health, have a fair income, an all out of debt and have five hundred dollars in the bank. What is my duty towards the man who lives next to me?"

"I don't know all the details in such a case. If the man has no one else in the world to help him except you, it is plainly your duty to help him out of his trouble with your five hundred dollars. How much of it you ought to use in helping him will depend on other things. Suppose there are ten other men in the same condition, all dependent on you for help, you can't give them all five hundred dollars apiece. Suppose you have a family yourself dependent on you, the divine law tells you to take care of your family. There might be circumstances in this supposable case of yours when it would be your duty to let the man next door to you have the entire five hundred. There might be other circumstances that would make it wrong for you to give him a cent of money. The Bible says, ‘whosoever hath the world's goods and seeth his brother have need and shutteth his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?' The plain teaching is that we are to relieve all the suffering we can. Do all the good we can. Not hoard up money. Not be selfish. I don't think any man with good health and five hundred dollars in the bank and a heart ready to do the will of God and anxious to love his fellow man would be plagued very much to know what to do in such a case. He would do something any way, if his neighbor was dependent on him for help. And as I say, he might use the five hundred dollars for him or he might not. In any case he would have compassion on him and help as far as possible, that is, he would if he had the right thought of bearing the burdens of the weak and not pleasing himself."

Question. "Why are people of genius so apt to be queer and odd and do such outlandish things different from common people?"

"Because they are geniuses, I suppose. That's one of the penalties of being born great. They will always be different from other people. And then they say that geniuses are only another kind of crazy people, and that would account for their queer actions."

Question. "The papers said that one of the recently elected governors of one of the states spent seventeen thousand dollars to get the election. If that is true, what do you think of it?"

"If it is true I think it is simply a tremendous argument against the spoils theory of office holding. A man cannot honestly spend seventeen thousand dollars to get elected to anything."

Question. "Who is more to blame, the man who sells whisky or the man who buys it?"

"The man who sells. The man who buys it is to blame, too, but not so much as the other."

Question. "You said a few weeks ago in a sermon that you thought the Sunday paper was on the whole a bad thing. What is the best argument against the Sunday paper?"

"The best argument is that the Sunday paper compels the civilized community to keep up the same contact with politics, fashion, sport, gossip, and crime all the week. It does not allow the community to pause and give it breathing or resting for something else and different one day in seven. Close on the heels of the Sunday paper comes the Monday morning paper and thousands of civilized people are saturated with newspaper. They think newspaper and eat newspaper and dream newspaper. They don't read anything else or take time to let their minds lie open for twenty-four hours for something entirely different. One of the best uses of Sunday is rest from the world and the things of the world. The Sunday paper destroys this rest. It breaks in on a man selfishly after having been at him all the week and says, ‘Read me some more!" All that most preachers ask of people is about two hours of Sunday. But the Sunday paper insists on claiming at least four or five hours of the people's time on Sunday. That's what I call the best argument against the Sunday paper."

Question. "Would you advise a girl not to have anything to do with a young man simply because he smokes, if he is good enough in every other respect? What should she do?"

"Smoking is not a crime. It is, as I think and as this girl evidently thinks, a bad habit. I would not advise the girl not to have anything to do with the young man if me is good and pure in every other respect. If that last clause is true, the girl has a good chance to win such a young man from smoking if she dislikes it and he knows it. If I were she I would plainly let him know what I thought of smoking. He will respect her all the more for her frankness in telling him what she thinks. And if he is really good and pure and values her respect or even if his feeling should ever grow into something deeper, if he is good and pure he will break off the habit for her sake. Smoking is a useless, espensive, and worst of all, disagreeable habit. The good, pure young man has no more right to indulge in this disagreeable habit than the good, pure girl who asks this question. Suppose the girl ask the young man sometime, ‘What would you think of me to see me going down State Street puffing a cigarette or cigar? Would you want to continue my acquaintance?' No, I cannot say to you, Don't have anything to do with him. But let him know that you dislike the habit and if he still keeps on with it, it will look very much as if he thought more of his smoke than he does of you and you ought to be glad that it mever went any farther.

"That ends the questions this evening" said John King closing the box and after the usual social chat the class departed.

When Victoria reached Chicago again she went at once to the old home. Her father was still there. He was evidently glad to have her back. Victoria noted with deepening sorrow the signs of growing dissipation in his face and figure. Her means were now such that she was able to move into a more desirable house in a better part of the city. She also persuaded her father to give up his theater engagement and succeeded in getting a few pupils for him. Her own reputation helped her to do this. For the next three years the history of Victoria was a history of constant public triumph in her profession and of secret anguish over the home life of her father and the position of Victor. At last the term of Victor's imprisonment expired. In all the time of his imprisonment Victoria had written to him and also visited him. In all that time he had maintained his stubborn silence with the other prisoners and the prison officials. Victoria wrote him when he was released to come at once to her. Some public engagement had prevented her going to him. She had sent him money to provide liberally for his expenses. But the weeks went by and Victor did not appear and he did not write. Victoria in her heart of hearts felt the anguish of the situation and longed for the brother and imagined all kinds of possible fate for him.

She had come home from the Symphony one evening at this time, after an enthusiastic reception from a magnificent audience and was sitting alone and waiting as she often did for her father to come in, when she heard the bell ring and went out herself to answer the door. There stood Victor. She knew him at once and with a cry of joy and a sob she dragged him into the house with all her love for him as strong as ever. He was plainly moved but did not show it in any demonstrative way. His face was hard and old. Otherwise he had the same jaunty self-satisfied look. After several questions concerning his movements, Victor said speaking slowly and doggedly,

"I can't get anything to do. I sang in a church in one town for five dollars a Sunday. When they found out who I was they told me to go. Everybody knows me here. But I thought I would make a strike and come."

"Father has been holding that money for you, Victor, that mother left," Victoria said timidly. She was surprised at Victor's apparent indifference. He said--

"I don't need it just now. Vi, there is just one thing I want. I want a chance to sing again. Either in John King's church or with you in the Symphony. But I'm a felon! A convict! My career is ruined!" For the first time he showed signs of breaking down. Victoria kneeled beside him. Her mind was in a whirl of conjecture. Would John King let Victor come back? Would the manager engage him to sing solo parts in the Symphony? Or would society now brand him as an outcast? She asked it as she kneeled beside him who was at that moment the dearest person to her in all the wide sinning, suffering world.

~ end of chapter 7 ~