The old woman stood upright in the shadow of a tall palm-tree, a shadow that spread round her on the milk-white beach like a purple star. Then her violin began to speak, began to cry, through the great simple melody of the Largo of Handel, like the soul of an outcast angel.
At the climax of its infinite compassion, two strings snapped in quick succession, and she sank to the ground with a sob, hugging the violin to her breast, as if it were a child.
"That was the last," she said.
They saw her head fall over on her shoulder, as she lay back against the stem of the palm, an old, old woman asleep in the deep heart of its purple star of shadow; and they knew, instinctively, even before the Captain of the Pearl advanced to make quite sure, that it was indeed the last.
X
THE GARDEN ON THE CLIFF
"I don't know about three acres and a cow, but every man ought to have his garden. That's the way I look at it," said the old fisherman, picking up another yard of the brown net that lay across his knees. "There's gardens that you see, and gardens that you don't see. There's gardens all shut in with hedges, prickly hedges that 'ull tear your hand if you try to make a spy-hole in them; and some that you wouldn't know was there at all—invisible gardens, like the ones that Cap'n Ellis used to talk about.
"I never followed him rightly; for I supposed he meant the garden of the heart, the same as the sentimental song; but he hadn't any use for that song, so he told me. My wife sent it to him for a Christmas present, thinking it would please him; and he used it for pipe-lights. The words was very pretty, I thought, and very appropriate to his feelings:
'Ef I should plant a little seed of love,
In the garden of your heart.