"If I can remember the music I'll sing you a Scotch song called Ettrick. I loved it so that I made the music for it myself. But it's been a long, long time since I've sung it——"
Her hands wandered among the keys, gathering a harmony here, a note or two of the melody. It was as if she were gathering flowers of sound with her slow, caressing fingers. She found the right opening chords at last, ventured them softly, then struck full. It was a royal burst of sound—those chords and her violet voice together: out leaped the glad exultant words:
"When we first rade down Ettrick,
Our bridles were ringing, our hearts were dancing,
The waters were singing, the sun was glancing.
An' blithely our voices rang out thegither,
As we brushed the dew frae the blooming heather,
When we first rade down Ettrick."
She paused, drew in a deep breath like sighing. The next chords fell sad and heavy as earth upon the dead.
"When we next rade down Ettrick,
The day was dying, the wild birds calling,
The wind was sighing, the leaves were falling,
An' silent an' weary, but closer thegither,
We urged our steeds thro' the faded heather,
When we next rade down Ettrick."
Then came wild dissonance, and a minor like the wailing of the wind—then once more the heavy, disconsolate chords, dirge-like, apathetic. Her voice sounded like a voice wafting back across the river of death in those last lines of all—so spent and inconsolable it was:
"For we never again were to ride thegither
In sun or storm on the mountain heather."
Amaldi sat very still, but his heart raced. Wonder filled him—wonder and exultation and great pain. She was so marvellous to him—her beauty of flesh and of spirit—now this added beauty of music. And this soul of music in her was one with his. They were one in this at least. He felt that if chance had been less cruel they might have been one in all things. It seemed hateful and stupid, that the gross senselessness of circumstance should have set them so far apart. When she ceased singing he sprang to his feet, went close to her.
"You are wonderful ... you are wonderful...." he said shakenly. They were both rather pale. She sat looking up at him in silence. Then she said in a low voice:
"It is a joy to sing to one who understands as you do."