"It—it's beautiful, Leon. I was to have sung it on my program to-night—only, I'm afraid you had better not—here—now—"
"Please, Leon! Nothing you play can ever make me as sad as it makes me glad. Mannie should have, too, his good-by."
"All right, then, ma, if—if you're sure you want it. Will you sing it,
Gina?"
She had risen. "Why, yes, Leon."
She sang it then, quite purely, her hands clasped simply together and her glance mistily off, the beautiful, the heroic, the lyrical prophecy of a soldier-poet and a poet-soldier:
"But I've a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear."
In the silence that followed, a sob burst out, stifled, from Esther
Kantor, this time her mother holding her in arms that were strong.
"That, Leon, is the most beautiful of all your compositions. What does it mean, son, that word, 'rondy-voo'?"
"Why, I—I don't exactly know. A rendezvous—it's a sort of meeting, an engagement, isn't it, Miss Gina? Gina? You're up on languages. As if I had an appointment to meet you some place—at the opera-house, for instance."
"That's it, Leon—an engagement."