"Oh, Moon of my delight, that knows no wane, The Moon of heaven is rising once again. How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this same garden after me in vain!
And when thyself with shining foot shall pass Among the guests star-scattered on the grass, And in thy joyous errand reach the spot where I made one, Turn down an empty glass!"
Violet did not know when or how she reached the window, but the ending of the song found her kneeling there, sobbing quietly, her head buried on her crossed arms. The moonlight fell on her shining hair. Edgar saw her and, springing up, came near, careful to keep in shadow, for other window shades had risen.
"Violet!" he said again. A hand white in the moonlight motioned him away, and he believed that she was weeping. Tears of sympathy, of triumph, sprang to his own eyes. So before very long would hundreds be shaken by his art.
"Just say good night, Violet," he begged softly; but she would not look up. She waved her hand again, and her shade came down.
Only one week since she had come to the island and it seemed months. Her aunt's words had pierced what she knew now had been a hope. How could she have been so insane as to hope it! Even given such a wild supposition as that Edgar Fabian would marry a nobody, what comfort or peace was in store for his wife? Violet had seen a play called "The Concert," in which a wife had been obliged to share her artist husband with a miscellaneous lot of female admirers. Better a thousand times to marry a shoemaker or any other obscure body and so be left to his undisturbed possession.
Aunt Amy was terribly right. More right than she knew.
Violet crept back to bed in a tumult of sensible reasoning, accompanying which was an intoxicating obbligato of divine music, which sang and sang through her excited brain.
Meanwhile Edgar, strolling back deliberately through the field, smiled at his own thoughts. So the mocking eyes had been quenched. What a fine combination that girl was: so spirited, so sincere, so temperamental.
Kathleen's appeal recurred to him. "She's right, I suppose," he reflected. "After smelling hothouse flowers all winter, the wild rose is alluring; but--" his further thoughts were vague; but they comprised a virtuous intention of fair play towards the girl whom he had left weeping at the feet of his genius.