And youth beguiles the race
I follow—follow still—but I
Shall never see his face.”
“Grant!” she cried, then shivered as the sound travelled around the room, through the tidies and antimacassars, over to the what-not and glass candlesticks, and back again to her.
How could it all have been so dear—how could she have been so tremblingly ecstatic? How could it all be ended—leaving everything as flat and grey as the beach after the sun had been wet-blanketed by the sea mist, on that day of centuries?——But after the sun had gone—the moon had come up. She raised her head and started playing again; and this time it was an old Italian air over which she had been working.
The little town had no place for her; it was preoccupied. And so she came back at the end of two weeks, ready to plunge into work, actually longing for the feverish round of the apartment to swirl about her while she worked. While she worked.
Pa found her a French woman and Italian professor for instructors, and he himself taught her the elements of music. “I don’t always like to bother with this myself,” he said, “but I want you to get it right—see the poetry and fascination of it—not have it dinned into you in a cut-and-dried way that only makes you aware of the toilsome mathematics of the thing.”
She threw herself into her study with an intense concentration that left her no energy for anything else—that left her almost no time to listen to the telephone and door bell, and watch the mail . . . for she still was in that vague expectancy. Surely he would not be forever gone, without a word save the fitful telephoning during her illness. She watched Jerry’s gaiety and wondered if beneath, Jerry also was hiding expectancy—if she still hoped that any day she might hear some word. . . . She could see Jerry reverting to the newsie in grey sweater and bloomers, kicking “The Idylls of the King” about the room. Jerry was not to be blamed. “The Idylls” were long out of date; and where was there a Perfect Knight?
Late one afternoon, Jerry burst in upon her while she was indulging in a little light reading: “How to Listen to an Orchestra.”
“Joy, if you study any more you’ll get eye-trouble, and whoever heard of a singer getting away with wearing glasses? We’ve absolutely got to have another girl to-night—it’ll do you good to get out! How can you stand this perpetual-motion-of-the-brain!”