"That wouldn't make any difference. When you sing, it wakens something in me, some discontent, some longing bigger than I am, and that's not pleasure. It is pain."
"Are you afraid of pain?"
He waited a long time. Then he asked her,—
"Have you ever known pain?"
"Yes. I thought my mind was going."
"But not pain of your body?"
"Oh, no, not that."
"The pain of the body is something to be afraid of. If we have it once, we cringe when we see it coming. But your singing—can I tell you what it wakens in me? No, for I don't know. Pain, the premonition of pain. Something I must escape."
"Yet I was to sit by and sing to you while you were at work."
"Yes, but that would be when we were quite content." It was the first wistful hint that things were lacking to him. He could not be contented; yet, against reason, his manner told a different, braver story.