"Miss Ida," he said impetuously, "I cannot tell you what a fascination your new, beautiful life has for me as seen against the dark background of memories which neither you nor I can ever wholly banish. But I am causing you pain now," for she became very pale, as was ever the case when there was the faintest allusion to the awful crime which she had contemplated. "Forgive me," he added earnestly, "and sing, please, that little meadow brook song, of which I caught a few bars last evening. That, I think, must contain an antidote against all morbid thoughts."
"You are mistaken," she said. "It's very silly and sentimental; you won't like it."
"Nevertheless please sing it, for if not to my taste, you will prevent it from running in my head any longer, as it has ever since I heard it."
"You will never ask for it again," she said, and she sang the following words to a low-gliding melody designed to suggest the murmur of a small stream:
'Twas down in a meadow, close by a brook,
A violet bloomed in a shadowy nook.
She gazed at the rill with a wistful eye—-
"He cares not for me, he's hastening by,"
She sighed.
In sunshine and shade the brook sped along,
Nor ceased for a moment his gurgling song.
"'Twould sing all the same were I withered and dead"—-
And the blue-eyed violet bowed her head
And died.
But the rill and the song went on the same
Till the pitiless frost of winter came,
When the song was hushed in an icy chill,
And the gay little brook at last stood still
And thought—-
"Oh, could I now see the violet blue
that looked at me once with eyes of dew,
I'd spring to her feet and lingering stay
Till sure I was bearing her love away,
Well sought."
The song seemed to disturb the artist somewhat. "The stupid brook!" he exclaimed. "It was so stupid as to be almost human."
"I knew you wouldn't like it," she said, looking up at him in surprise.
"I like your singing and the music, but that brook provokes me, the little idiot! Why didn't it stop before?"
"I take the brook's part," said Ida. "Because the violet gazed at it in a lackadaisical way was no reason for its stopping unless it wanted to. Indeed, if I were the violet I should want the brook to go on, unless it couldn't help stopping."