When my heart is sad and troubled,
Then my quivering lips shall say,
“Oh! by and by you will forget me,
By and by when far away!”
Good-bys were said at last; Forbes and See put foot to stirrup and rode jingling into the white moonlight; the others stood silent on the porch and watched them go. A hundred yards down the road, Adam Forbes drew rein. A guitar throbbed low behind them.
“Hark,” he said.
Edith Harkey stood in the shaft of golden light from the doorway; she bore herself like the Winged Victory; her voice thrilled across the quiet of the moonlit night:
“Never the nightingale,
Oh, my dear!
Never again the lark
Thou wilt hear;
Though dusk and the morning still
“Tap at thy window-sill,
Though ever love call and call
Thou wilt not hear at all,
My dear, my dear!”
The sad notes melted into the sweet pagan heartbreak of the enchanted night. They turned to go.
“A fine girl,” said Adam Forbes. “The only girl! To-morrow—”
He fell silent; again in his heart that parting cadence knelled with keen and intolerable sorrow. The roots of his hair prickled, ants crawled on his spine. So tingles the pulsing blood, perhaps, when a man is fey, when the kisses of his mouth are numbered.
Edith went home to the big lonely house, but Lyn Dyer and Hobby Lull lingered by the low fire. Mr. Lull assumed a dignified pose before the fireplace, feet well apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He regarded Miss Dyer with a twinkling eye.
“Have you anything to say to the court before sentence is pronounced?” he inquired with lofty judicial calm.