“You mean that society would condemn you to die with all your music in you?”
“Practically, yes; but I refused to obey the sentence. Therefore, I am a rebel.”
She arose, and he followed her into the music-room.
“Here’s a little thing,” she said, striking a few chords on the instrument, “that I have never sent to my publisher.”
The chords ran into a weird, almost barbaric prelude. Then she began to sing. She had used the words of Heine’s little gem of crystallized unrest:—
“A pine-tree standeth lonely,
On a far Norland height;
It slumbereth, while around it
The snow falls thick and white.
And of a palm it dreameth