Left to himself the plainsman looked around the hall which seemed a splendid and spacious one to him. It was filled with ladies in beautiful costumes, and with men in clawhammer coats. He had seen pictures of evening suits in the newspapers but never before had he been privileged to behold live men in them. The men seemed pale and puny for the most part. He had never before seen ladies in low-necked dresses and one just before him seemed shamelessly naked, and he gazed at her in astonishment. He was glad Mary had more modesty.
The concert interested him but did not move him. The songs were brilliant but without meaning. He waited with fierce impatience for Mary to come on, and during this wait he did an inordinate amount of thinking. A hundred new conceptions came into his besieged brain—engaging but by no means confusing him. He perceived that Mary was already as much a part of this high-colored life as she had been of the life of Marmion, quite at ease, certain of herself, and the cañon between them widened swiftly. She was infinitely further away from him than before. His cause now entirely hopeless, he had no right to ask any such sacrifice of her—even if she were ready to make it.
As she stepped out upon the stage in the glare of the light, she seemed as far from him as the roseate crown of snow on Sierra Blanca, and he shivered with a sort of awe. Her singing moved him less than her delicate beauty—but her voice and the pretty way she had of lifting her chin thrilled him just as when he sat in the little church at Marmion. The flowerlike texture of her skin and the exquisite grace of her hands plunged him into gloom.
He did not join in the generous applause which followed—he wondered if she would sing If I Were a Voice for him. He felt a numbness creeping over his limbs and he drew his breath like one in pain. Mary looked pale as a lily as she returned and stood waiting for the applause to die away. Then out over the tense audience, straight toward him, soared her voice quivering with emotion—she dared to sing the old song for him.
Suddenly all sense of material things passed from the wild heart of the plainsman. He saw only the singer who stood in the center of a white flame. A soft humming roar was in his ears like the falling of rain drops on the leaves of maple trees. He remembered the pale little girl in the prison—this was not Mary—but she had the voice and the spirit of Mary——
Then the song stopped! The singer went away—the white light went with her and the yellow glare of lamps came back. He heard the passionate applause—he saw Mary reappear and bow, a sad smile on her face—a smile which he alone could understand—her heart was full of pity for him. Then once more she withdrew, and staggering like one suffering from vertigo—the eagle-hearted youth went out of the hall and down the polished stairway like an outcast soul, descending from paradise into hell.
That radiant singer was not for such as Black Mose.