"Will you fix the day?" he asked.
She uttered a sudden, breathless laugh—the reckless laugh of the loser.
"Surely that cannot matter!" she said. "The first day or the last—as you say, what difference does it make?"
"You leave the choice tome?" he asked, without the smallest change of countenance.
"Certainly!" she said coldly.
"Then I choose the first," he rejoined.
And at the words she gave a great start as if already she repented the moment of recklessness.
The notes of a piano struck suddenly through the almost tragic silence that covered up the protest she had not dared to utter. A few quiet chords; and then a woman's voice began to sing. Slowly, with deep, hidden pathos, the words floated out into the night; and, involuntarily almost, the man and the girl stood still to listen:
Shadows and mist and night,
Darkness around the way,
Here a cloud and there a star,
Afterwards, Day!
Sorrow and grief and tears,
Eyes vainly raised above,
Here a thorn and there a rose;
Afterwards, Love!