Eva looked up from the pictures and listened.
“I’ve lost the game,” Christian said. He arose and mounted the steps to the gallery. He leaned over the balustrade and looked down. In an outward curve of the balustrade there lay, like an egg in its cup, a globe on a metal stand.
“What were you playing?” Eva asked, as Denis paused.
He turned around. “I’ve been trying to compose a passage from the Song of Songs,” he answered. He played again and sang in an agreeable voice: “Arise, thou lovely one, for the winter is past.”
The sound of the organ stirred a feeling of hatred in Christian. He gazed upon Eva’s form. In a gown of sea-green, slim, far, estranged, she sat there. And as he looked at her there blended with his hatred of the music another feeling—one of oppression and of poignant pain, and his heart began to throb violently.
“Arise, thou lovely one, and come with me,” Denis sang again, and Crammon softly hummed the air too. Eva looked up, and her glance met Christian’s. In her face there was a mysterious expression of loftiness and love.
Christian took the globe from its stand and played with it. He let it roll back and forth between his hands on the flat balustrade like a rubber ball. The sphere suddenly slipped from him, fell and rolled along the floor to Eva’s feet.
Denis and Crammon gathered about it; Christian came down from the gallery.
Eva picked up the globe and went toward Christian. He took it from her, but she at once held out her hands again. Then she held it daintily poised upon the fingertips of her right hand. Her left hand, with fingers spread out, she held close to it; her head was gently inclined, her lips half open.