At last she came back to life's facts. She found her hand in his again, and gently, without protest, disengaged it. Her face was white and fixed upon nothingness.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked, gently. He started and drew breath with a gasp.
"I do not know—of you, I suppose." And then, as she was silent and embarrassed: "There is a tone in the ocean, a note I have never heard before, and I have listened on all seas. But here is the new song different from all. I could listen forever."
"I have read somewhere," she said, "that all the sound waves escape to the ocean. They jostle and push against each other where men abound, the new crowding out the old; but out at sea there is room for all. It may be that you hear only as your heart is attuned."
He nodded his head, pleased greatly.
"Then I have heard to-night," he said, earnestly, "a song of a woman to the man she loves."
"But you could not have heard it unless your heart was attuned to love's melodies. Have you ever loved a woman, Mr. Morgan?"
He started and his hand tightened upon the guard.
"I was a boy in heart when I went abroad," he said. "I had never known a woman's love and sympathy. In Switzerland a little girl gave me a glass of goat's milk at a cottage door in the mountains. She could not have been more than 12 years old. I heard her singing as I approached, her voice marvelous in its power and pathos. Her simple dress was artistic, her face frank and eyes confiding. I loved her. I painted her picture and carried her both in my heart and my satchel for three years. I did not love her and yet I believed I did. But I think that I must have loved at some time. As you say, I could not have heard if it were not so." He drew her away and sought the cabin. But when he said good-night he came and walked the deck for an hour, and once he tossed his arms above him and cried out in agony: "I cannot! I cannot! The heart was not made for such a strain!"