Mariana shook her head.
“It’s the only time I ever feel, the only time I ever live.”
“But it is pain and sorrow.”
“Better than emptiness. Now I have lost the only thing I love. All week it lies quite mute, a thing of idleness, bursting with life. And when I take it up it utters so long a wail, so sad a sigh, that my heart returns to it, and we weep together till pain becomes an ecstasy and sadness joy.”
“Oh, Mariana! what a life is yours!”
“No different from the rest. A life of grey to-morrows that come and go in endless twilight.”
“Will you feel like this to-morrow?”
“No. To-morrow brings a calm existence. To-night I fill my heart with tears.”
“What was it brought you here?”
“Oh! I loved not wisely, but too well, this little fiddle.”