"Fine!" cried Westmore. "Try it again, Dulcie!"
"Maybe you'll like this better," she said:
"Our Irish girls are beautiful, As all the world will own; An Irish smile in Irish eyes Would melt a heart of stone; But all their smiles and all their wiles Will quickly turn to sneers If you fail to fight for Erin In the Irish Volunteers!"
"Hurrah!" cried Westmore, beating time and picking up the chorus of the "Irish Volunteers," which Dulcie played to a thunderous finish amid frantic applause.
She sang for them "The West's Awake!", "The Risin' of the Moon," "Clare's Dragoons," and "Paddy Get Up!" And after Westmore had exercised his lungs sufficiently in every chorus, he and Thessalie went off to their respective quarters, leaving Barres leaning on the piano beside Dulcie.
"Your people are a splendid lot--given half a chance," he said.
"Certainly. After all, Sweetness, you're Irish, you know."
"I don't know what I am," she murmured half to herself.
"Whoever you are it's the same to me, Dulcie." ... He took a few short, nervous turns across the room; walked slowly back to her: "Has it come back to you yet--that song of your mother's you were trying to remember?"
Even while he was speaking the song came back to her memory--her mother's song called "Asthore"--startling her with its poignant significance to herself.
"I don't wish to sing 'Asthore'----" She bent her head and gazed at the keyboard, the painful colour dyeing her neck and cheeks.
When at length she looked up at him out of lovely, distressed eyes, something in his face--something--some new expression which she dared not interpret--set her heart flying. And, scarcely knowing what she was saying in her swift and exquisite confusion:
"The words of my mother's song would mean nothing to you, Garry," she faltered. "You could not understand them----"
"B-because you could not be in sympathy with them."
The smile edging her lips glimmered in her eyes now--a reckless little glint of humour, almost defiant.
He seemed conscious of a latent excitement in her to which something within himself was already responsive.
"It's about a lover," she said, "--one of the old-fashioned, head-long, hot-headed sort--Irish, of course!--you'd not understand--such things----" Her tongue and colour were running random riot; her words outstripped her thoughts and tripped up her tongue, scaring her a little. She drummed on the keys a rollicking trill or two, hesitated, stole a swift, uncertain glance at him.