He had caught at his instrument; a madness seemed to have risen in his brain, desperate, inspired, overbearing, all in one; he hardly knew what he was saying or doing—only that some passion, insidious, unrealised till this moment, was mastering and overwhelming him. “Listen,” he whispered, while she stood before him white and wondering—“hear what it means to me—what emotions—what old sweet agonies of death and parting.” The music came to him, the words, the throbbing anguish of it, as he spoke:
“Love-in-a-mist! Blue eyes in tangled hair—
Wet eyes that brim through lashes of dark rain—
Where have I known your mystery, your pain?
In what green gardens kissed your soft despair?
“There was a parting once—but when? but where?
I ask it of my heart, and ask in vain—
Only a wild voice weeps across the main:
‘Love-in-a-mist! Wet eyes in tangled hair!’”
He ended; and a dead silence ensued. Then the girl, moving like one half stupefied, and with a sigh that seemed to rend her bosom, took a single step away and stopped.