At that stage of life, something usually does happen....
Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it. The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind.
"We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the Beauty of the World."
"How can one enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly of herself....
Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother had once made an English version of it:
"Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,
(Byushky, byu),
Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,
Smiles thy mother, too.
"Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,—
(Byushky, byu).
Blood and tears and fear and glory
Shall I know through you.
"But to-night thou art my small one,
(Byushky, byu),
With the moon to bless thy slumber,
And thy mother, too."
Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.
She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who occasionally entertained musicians—But she was mistaken. It came from her own house.