His fingers began to follow an air that flowed with eternal sadness like blood from a broken heart.
His fingers found their way once more to the keys, and for a while harmonies rose in slow, quiet succession like a meditation, and took more shape presently as if something had been decided on, and began to follow an air that flowed with eternal sadness like blood from a broken heart ... and then once more the Poor Boy was singing:
"Let us go hence, my songs, she will not hear,
Let us go hence, together, without fear.
Keep silence now, for singing time is over,
And over all things old, and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me, as all we love her.
Yea! Though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear."
He broke off abruptly. The knob had rattled in a door!—a door had opened, and been swiftly closed. The Poor Boy leapt to his feet. He thought he had heard her voice.
He stood, and trembled....
·········
That "Yea! though we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear," had been too much for Joy. She had sobbed and said things, and had tried to go to him. It was her voice that he had heard.
Martha had dragged her out of danger and sent her to bed with a scolding. "The conceit of some people!" she had exclaimed. "To be always thinking it's themselves as is grouped in the lime-light of another's thoughts!"