Dare, a little apart from the rest, took up his position beside a tall bush of gardenias and listened with absorbed attention until the finish of the song, his keen eyes never leaving the singer’s face, lost in a wondering rapture of admiration for the singer as much as for the song.
“Ah! réponds à ma tendresse...”
The seductive words, the seductive tones, thrilled him. He was Samson listening to Delilah,—a Delilah sweet and charming and womanly, without the sting of poison in her passionate entreating.
When the song ended he still remained motionless, not joining in the applause which followed, heedless of everything about him, conscious only of one fair girlish face, of a pair of limpid eyes, blue as the African sky itself, and of the tender curve of sweet lips made for laughter. For five years he had been searching for this face, and he found it here—the centre jewel in another man’s crown of happiness.
“Her price is far above rubies; the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her; her children rise up and call her blessed...” Involuntarily the words came to his mind with a sense of their appropriateness. Where had he heard them? He did not know. But assuredly they were written for her.
He turned his head and glanced at the people near him. With the finish of the song they had started talking again, carrying on the conversations which the music had interrupted. No one seemed to have been impressed, as he had been, with the moving power of the seductive voice. Possibly they had heard it often before: he heard it for the first time, and felt profoundly stirred.
When he looked round again she had moved away, and formed one of a gay group on the stoep. He waited until she left this group, then, when he saw her alone for a moment, he seized his chance and joined her. Her guests had been pressing her to sing again, but she declined. For some reason Dare was glad she refused. He wanted no other song, perhaps with an altogether different sentiment, to sweep away the emotions which the first song had produced in his soul. He was oddly stirred and excited, moved out of his ordinary calm by a sensuous love song finely rendered by a woman who was an artist, and yet surprisingly natural.
He did not compliment her on her singing. It was the obvious thing to do; but Dare seldom did the obvious. If he could have thanked her in his own way for the pleasure she had given, that would have been an altogether different matter. But his way was not consistent with twentieth-century customs, nor was it practicable in the case of a married woman in the company of her husband and friends.
“I’ve been exploring your beautiful grounds, Mrs Arnott,” he said. “What a delightful place you have here.”
“Yes; isn’t it?” returned Pamela, with ingenuous pride in her home. “I’m so glad you like it. I love it.”