"Now," he said, "that is nothing. It is to get one's fingers accustomed to the keys you play anything that is loud and rapid. But if you please, madame, shall I sing you something?"
"I will sing for you a little German song which I believe Jenny Lind used to sing, but I never heard her sing. You know German?"
"This is only the cry of some one who is far away about his sweetheart. It is very simple, both in the words and the music."
And he began to sing, in a voice so rich, so tender and expressive that Sheila sat amazed and bewildered to hear him. Where had this boy caught such a trick of passion, or was it really a trick that threw into his voice all the pathos of a strong man's love and grief? He had a powerful baritone, of unusual compass and rare sweetness; but it was not the finely-trained art of his singing, but the passionate abandonment of it, that thrilled Sheila, and indeed brought tears to her eyes. How had this mere lad learned all the yearning and despair of love, that he sang,
Dir bebt die Brust, Dir schlägt dies Herz, Du meine Lust! O du, mein Schmerz! Nur an den Winden, den Sternen der Höh, Muss ich verkünden mein süsses Weh!--
as though his heart were breaking? When he had finished he paused for a moment or two before leaving the piano, and then he came over to where Sheila sat. She fancied there was a strange look on his face, as of one who had been really experiencing the wild emotions of which he sang; but he said, in his ordinary careful way of speaking, "Madame, I am sorry I cannot translate the words for you into English. They are too simple; and they have, what is common in many German songs, a mingling of the pleasure and the sadness of being in love that would not read natural perhaps in English. When he says to her that she is his greatest delight and also his greatest grief, it is quite right in the German, but not in the English."
"But where have you learned all these things?" she said to him, talking to him as if he were a mere child, and looking without fear into his handsome boyish face and fine eyes. "Sit down and tell me. That is the song of some one whose sweetheart is far away, you said. But you sang it as if you yourself had some sweetheart far away."