She had motioned him close beside her with an impelling wave of the hand. He could feel her warmth, her fragrant breath; her soft billowy dress fell against his foot in a crested wave; her white hand and slender wrist, just toned, but not hidden, with rare lace like that of Arachne's spinning, wandered temptingly over toward him. A sudden delirium took possession of him, an exhilaration that steeped the brain, that stirred every pulse, that awoke in him an almost maddening desire to clasp her in his arms, to drain such sweetness from her lips that the whole world might be beggared ever after, and he not care.
She knew the signs. She had seen more than one man dally on the brink, and then topple over to the blankness of despair. Even if she had pitied herself, which she did not, she could have had no mercy on him. Now she was set to her work, and she meant to do it if she brought into play every fascination art and nature had furnished her with.
His soul rose and glowed within him. The music, the most ravishing of its kind, stirred him to that intensity of pain, it seemed as if he must cry out with torture. No suffering had ever been like this: if the doctrine of sacrificial fires were true, he might have purchased paradise.
Did he mean never to stir or speak? Could that hand, lying so passively on the corner of the piano, remain unmoved, with hers just below it? Its defiant strength stung her.
"They do not come,"—looking warily around, and passing him with her veiled eyes, rather than looking at him. "Are you growing weary? Shall I sing for you?"
The tone had the melody of some lotus-freighted stream. She had thrown all her sweetness into it.
"If you will."
His was tremulous and husky with repressed passion.
Her voice was not pure: it had the rich depth and pathos of contralto, and the vibrant clearness of soprano. Now it threaded a tremulous pathway among the pathetic minor notes, while the fingers seemed to drop a faint sigh of accompaniment,—
"Oh! when ye hear me gie a loud, loud cry,—
The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,—
Shoot an arrow frae thy bow, and there let me lie,
And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair.
"And when ye see that I'm lying cauld and dead,—
The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,—
Then ye'll put me in a grave wi' a turf at my head,
And we'll never gang down to the broom ony mair."