"From the inception of what I considered my life mission, I made the resolve to bequeath to Agatha Shaw whatever manuscripts or other material of value my work should lead me to accumulate, together with this house, in which I have spent all the later years of my life. You are Agatha Shaw's only child, therefore to me a foster-child.
"Another reason, four years ago, led me to confirm my former testament. From time to time I have informed myself concerning your movements and fortunes. The work you have chosen, my dear Agatha, I can but believe to be fraught with unusual dangers to a young woman. Therefore I hope that this home, modest as it is, may tempt you to an early retirement from the stage, and lead you to a more private and womanly career. This I make only as a request, not as a condition. I bid you farewell, and give you my blessing.
Agatha Redmond folded the thin sheets carefully. There was a mist in her gaze as she looked off toward the distant city lights.
"Dear old gentleman! His whole love-story, and my mother's, too, perhaps!" Her quickened memory recalled childish impressions of a visit to a large country house and of a solemn old man--he seemed incredibly ancient to her--and of feeling that in some way she and her mother were in a special relationship to the house. It was called "the old red house," and was full of fascinating things. The ancient man had bidden her go about and play as if it were her home, and then had called her to him and laid open a book, leading her mind to regard its mysteries. Greek! It seemed to her as if she had begun it there and then. Later the mother became the teacher. She was nursed, as it were, within sight of the windy plains of Troy and to the sound of the Homeric hymns--and all by reason of this ancient scholar.
There was a vivid picture in her mind, gathered at some later visit, of a soft hillside, a small white church standing under its balm-of-gilead tree, and herself sitting by a stone in the old churchyard, listening to the strains of a hymn which floated out from the high, narrow windows. She remembered how, from without, she had joined in the hymn, singing with all her small might; and suddenly the association brought back to her a more recent event and a more beautiful strain of music. Half in reverie, half in conscious pleasure in the exercise of a facile organ, she began to sing: