“But thee will not dare to play—thee will not dare,” she said, but more as an invitation than a rebuke. “Speech was denied me here, but not my music. I find no sin in it.”
She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she could see the sunset.
The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching sweetness.
She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. “But it is dark!” he said, startled. “It is past the time thee should be with me. My banishment began at sunset.”
“Are all the sins to be thine?” she asked calmly. She had purposely let him play beyond the time set for their being together.
“Good-night, Davy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I will keep the music for the sin’s remembrance,” she added, and went out into the night.
CHAPTER IV. THE CALL
“England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense, so illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation. ‘Punish—restore the honour of the Christian nations’ is the proud appeal of prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical Muslim city of the East, have suffered death.”
The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall. Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing words.