“Did any one ever tell you that you talk as a prima donna ought to talk, but never does—‘soft, gentle, and low’?”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Certainly. Perhaps you sing.”
“I’ll get my guitar.”
She flashed into the house and back again. The starlight enabled him to see her indistinctly as she tightened the keys of a small guitar.
“I like this song,” she explained. “It was written by Fessenden, you know.”
“By whom?”
“Thomas Fessenden, the Fessenden, the man who——”
“Oh, of course.”
To hear himself thus referred to, to hear one of his own casual songs launched from the lips of a country girl in the splendor of a Maryland night, was a novel experience even for Fessenden. He realized with amusement that his identity was wholly unknown to Betty, that capricious young person not having allowed him as yet to mention his own name.