"Will ye do fair by her, Misther Barres?"
Soane dropped on to the bed and took his battered face and curly head between his hands.
"I'll say no more," he said thickly. "Nor you nor she shall know no more. An' av ye have guessed it out, kape it locked in. I'll say no more.... I was good to her--in me own way. But ye cud see--anny wan with half a cock-eye cud see.... I was--honest--with her mother.... She made the bargain.... I tuk me pay an' held me tongue.... 'Tis whishkey talks, not me.... I tuk me pay an' I kept to the bargain.... Wan year.... Then--she was dead of it--like a flower, sorr--like the rose ye pull an' lave lyin' in the sun.... Like that, sorr--in a year.... An' I done me best be Dulcie.... I done me best. An' held to the bargain.... An' done me best be Dulcie--little Dulcie--the wee baby that had come at last--_her_ baby--Dulcie Fane!..."
A single shaded lamp illuminated the studio, making the shapes of things vague where outline and colour were lost in the golden dusk. Dulcie, alone at the piano, accompanied her own voice with soft, scarcely heard harmonies, as she hummed, one after another, old melodies she had learned from the Sisters so long ago--"The Harp," "Shandon Bells," "The Exile," "Shannon Water"--songs of that sort and period:
"_The Bells of Shandon, Then sound so grand on The pleasant waters of the River Lee._"
Thessalie sat by the open window and Westmore squatted at her feet on the sill of the little balcony, doing, as usual, all the talking while she lay deep in her armchair waving her fan, listening, responding with a low-voiced laugh or word now and again.
"_On the banks of the Shannon When Mary was nigh._"
From that she changed to a haunting, poignant little song; and Barres looked up from his desk under the lamp. Then he sealed and stamped the three letters which he had written to his Foreland kinfolk, and, holding them in one hand, took his hat from the table with the other, as though preparing to rise. Dulcie half turned her head, her hands still idling over the shadowy keys:
"Why don't you mail your letters down stairs?"
"I'll step around to the branch post office; they'll go quicker.... What was that air you were playing just now?"