“I will tell you. My real name is not that I am known by—a nom de guerre, in literal truth. My own I laid to rest long years ago, never again to be revived. But love knows its own resurrections. I will tell you. It is for your sweet ears, for your sweet lips alone; and you will keep my secret, Isabel?”
She promised, and to the end was faithful to her vow.
“And now,” said he, “where is my flower?”
To his rapture, she brought the little withered spray out from her bosom, and kissed it once and gave it to him.
“It shall lie on my dead heart,” he said.
Her voice was full, her eyes were shining, as she answered:
“It gave me a living one, I think. O, love, the strangeness and the sorrow of your music! It robbed me of my soul, of my will, that day I listened here.”
He gazed at her, his eyes rapt and dreaming.
“It was the rain,” he said. “Such a wild wet day, after long heat, brings to me always, like no other, the passion of the past.”
“Your past?”