When she came to the end he murmured, deeply moved: "I can't say anything."
She could have asked no finer tribute. "You needn't," she murmured.
The pleasure she took in his applause was evidenced in the warmth she imparted to the next song. She made it intolerably plaintive: "Just a Wearyin' for You."
Evan held his breath in delight. "If the words were true!" he thought. But though she sang with abandon, she never looked at him. He was artist enough to know better than to take an artistic performance literally.
Nothing more was said for a long time. She passed from one song to another, singing from memory; dreamily improvising on the piano between. She chose only simple songs in English which pleased Evan well—could she read his heart?—the "Shoogy-Shoo"; "Little Boy Blue"; the "Sands o' Dee."
Evan was incapable of criticising her voice. Some might have objected that it lacked that bell-like clearness so much to be desired; that it had a dusky quality, but Evan was not quarrelling because it was the voice of a woman instead of an angel. One thing she had beyond peradventure, temperament; her heart was in her singing, and so it played on his heartstrings as she willed.
While he listened enraptured, he saw the moon peek over the buildings in the next street. He softly got up and turned off the impertinent gas. Beyond a startled glance over her shoulder she made no objection. He was utterly fascinated by the movements of the bright head, now raised, now lowered, now turned towards the window in the changing moods of the songs.
Moonlight completed the working of the spell that was laid upon him. For the moment he ceased to be a rational being. He was exalted by emotion far out of himself. He experienced the sweetness of losing his own identity. It was as if a great wind had snatched him up into the universal ether, a region of warmth of colour and perfume. But he was conscious of a pull on him like that of the magnet for the iron, a pull that was neither to be questioned nor resisted.
At the last she turned around on the bench again, and her hands dropped in her lap. "That is all. I'm tired," she said like a child.
With a single movement the rapt youth was at her feet, weaving his arms about her waist. Unpremeditated words poured from him; words out of deeps in him of which up to that moment he was unconscious.