“Darling, I am growing old.
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow to-day;
Life is fading fast away.
But, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me.”
Outside the leaves rustled, the birds called and the crickets sang their unending epithalamia of summer nights, and on this tone-background the melody rose tenderly and lingeringly like a haunting perfume of pressed flowers. She smiled and lifted the locket to her face, whispering the words of the refrain:
“Yes, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me!”
The smile was still on her lips when she fell asleep, and the little locket still lay in her fingers.
CHAPTER XLVII
WHEN THE CLOCK STRUCK
“
Sorrow weeps—sorrow sings.” As Shirley played that night, the old Russian proverb kept running through her mind. When she had pushed the gold harp into its corner she threw herself upon a broad sofa in a feathery drift of chintz cushions and dropped her forehead in her laced fingers. A gilt-framed mirror hung on the opposite wall, out of which her sorrowful brooding eyes looked with an expression of dumb and weary suffering.