"I really do not know," laughed Diana. "It is an article of furniture I do not use. Once a quarter, it lifts up its voice, poor dear, when a sleek person with a key of his own, arrives unexpectedly, asking for a duster, and announcing that he has come to tune it. He usually turns up when I have a luncheon party. Occasionally when Chappie is feeling low, and dwelling on the departed Marmaduke, she feels moved to play 'Home, Sweet Home'; but when Chappie plays 'Home, Sweet Home' you instantly discover that 'there's no place like'—being out; and, be it ever so cheerless, you catch up a hat, and flee! You may carry off the piano to Africa, if you will, Cousin David. And, meanwhile, see how you like it now, while I try to collect my ideas, and consider how best to lay my difficulties before you."
She moved across the long room, to the fireplace, drew forward a low chair, turning it so as to face the distant piano.
David, tingling with anticipation, opened the instrument with reverent care.
"It is a Bechstein," he said; then took his seat; pausing a moment, his hands upon his knees, his dark head bent over the keys.
Diana, watching him, laughed in her heart.
"What an infant it is, in some ways," she thought. "I do believe he is saying: 'For what we are about to receive'!" But, in another minute her laughter ceased. She was receiving more than she had expected. David had laid his hands upon the keys; and, straightway, the room was filled with music.
It did not seem to come from the piano. It did not appear to have any special connection with David. It came chiefly from an unseen purple sky overhead; not the murky darkness of an English winter, but the clear over-arching heavens of the Eastern desert—expansive, vast, fathomless.
Beneath it, rode a cavalcade of travellers—anxious, perplexed, uncertain. She could hear the soft thud of the camels' feet upon the sand, and see the slow swaying, back and forth, of the mysterious riders.
Suddenly outshone a star,—clear, luminous, divine; so brilliant, so unexpected, that the listener by the fireplace said, "Oh!"—then laid her hand over her trembling lips.