"What have you heard? I don't know that I can accompany you, but I'll try."
She was flushing painfully. He could see that she wanted to sing for him—to be a part of this wonderful dream-world in which he belonged, and yet she did not dare.
"What have you heard?" he repeated softly, encouraging her by running his fingers slowly over the simple chords of a major key.
Suddenly she started up and joined him by the piano.
"That's it—'The long, long trail a-windin'——" and in a moment was singing softly. He had heard the air and fell in with her almost at once.
"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingale is singing
And a bright moon beams——"
Like the good musician that he was, Peter submerged himself, playing gently, his gaze on his fingers, while he listened. He had made no mistake. The distances across which he had heard her had not flattered. Her voice was untrained, of course, but it seemed to Peter that it had lost nothing by the neglect, for as she gained confidence, she forgot Peter, as he intended that she should, and sang with the complete abstraction of a thrush in the deep wood. Like the thrush's note, too, Beth's was limpid, clear, and sweet, full of forest sounds—the falling brook, the sigh of night winds....
When the song ended he told her so.
"You do say nice things, don't you?" she said joyously.
"Wouldn't you—if it cost you nothing and was the truth? You must have your voice trained."