"What has been in my life but shame—shame which was not mine?" she cried, as the horror
of life with her drunken father came back to her. "Why are some given everything," she demanded, "and I nothing? Where is God's justice? What have I done; oh, what have I done?"
Out in the wooded silence a bird began to sing a mournful melody. Of the greatness of night he sang, and dead morns, and dropping stars; of dear forgotten things and loves that might have been, that may not be; of passion and unfulfilled desires, and through the pines the song entered her heart like a response. She listened, not as a girl listening to a bird, but as one artist listens to another with a rapture of appreciation. And the music comforted her. And later, in the midst of great sorrow, she saw intended significance in the occurrence.
"It was an answer," she said, "to remind me that there will always be that solace. Give me, oh God," she prayed, "power to make of all my sorrow music for the world!"
The day following her midnight protest she heard from Nora and old Cæsar that the guests at Ravenel had gone; heard as well that "old Miss and Marse Frank were goin' shortly"; heard it with a stirring at her heart of physical pain to which she had grown used.
On the evening of this day, a warm June even
ing, she expected him to come, and dressed as though there were an engagement between them to spend the evening together. In a thin white gown, low in the neck, with a kerchief of filmy lace knotted in front, sleeves that fell away at the elbow, with faint, pink roses at her breast, her black hair turned high in a curly knot, she stood in the old rose-garden when he came.
He wore a light overcoat over his evening dress, and stood hatless by the boxwood arch looking across at her.
"Katrine," he said, "little Katrine, I have come back to you."
His face was illumined as he spoke her name. The peculiar ability to express more than he felt was always his, but at the instant he felt more than he was able to express.