The impulse came to her then to turn and go, yet she resisted it. Later, it seemed to her that she had lacked the motive power to do aught but move straight to the piano and drop onto the music-stool before the keys. Her hands went out to them, and suddenly she was playing, at first very softly, then with gathering tone as she felt the instrument respond to her touch, till at length all sense of strangeness left her, and she began to sing the little French ditty that once had been one of her favourites! She had never heard her own voice to greater advantage than in that lofty music-room. It was a mezzo, sweet rather than powerful, with a ringing, bell-like quality that Charlie had been wont to compare to the tentative notes of a bullfinch. He had always declared that she was afraid of the sound of it, but this was certainly not the case to-day. The glad notes left her lips, true and free and birdlike. The heart within her had suddenly grown light.
The song came to an end. Her fingers began to wander idly over the keys. She played a dreamy air with an old-world waltz refrain, too lost in her trance of delight to realize what she played, and again half-unconsciously she was singing, as she had sung long ago before the gates of youth.
"There has fall’n a splendid tear, From the passion flower at the gate, She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate. The red rose cries, ’She is near, she is near’; And the white rose weeps, ’She is late’; The larkspur listens, ’I hear, I hear’; And the lily whispers, ’I wait.’"
Softly, sweetly, the notes stole through the room, wandered awhile, and ceased. There fell a pause, and the girl’s eyes rested dreaming on the long dark line of pine-trees red-flushed in the glow of sunset.
Then, still following her dream, she sang on.
"She is coming, my own, my sweet, Were it ever so airy a tread My heart would hear her and beat Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red."
And then she was singing the refrain, and while she sang it she awoke.
"Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat night has flown; Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone, I am here at the gate alone."