“Langhetti,” said Brandon, in a low voice, “does not understand love, or he would not put music in its place.”
“Yes,” said Beatrice. “We spoke once about that. He has his own ideas, which he expressed to me.”
“What were they?”
“I will have to say them as he said them,” said she. “For on this theme he had to express himself in music.”
Brandon waited in rapt expectation. Beatrice began to sing:
“Fairest of all most fair,
Young Love, how comest thou
Unto the soul?
Still as the evening breeze
Over the starry wave—
The moonlit wave—
“The heart lies motionless;
So still, so sensitive;
Love fans the breeze.
Lo! at his lightest touch,
The myriad ripples rise,
And murmur on.
“And ripples rise to waves,
And waves to rolling seas,
Till, far and wide,
The endless billows roll,
In undulations long,
For evermore!”
Her voice died away into a scarce audible tone, which sank into Brandon’s heart, lingering and dying about the last word, with touching and unutterable melancholy. It was like the lament of one who loved. It was like the cry of some yearning heart.
In a moment Beatrice looked at Brandon with a swift, bright smile. She had sung these words as an artist. For a moment Brandon had thought that she was expressing her own feelings. But the bright smile on her face contrasted so strongly with the melancholy of her voice that he saw this was not so.
“Thus,” she said, “Langhetti sang about it: and I have never forgotten his words.”
The thought came to Brandon, is it not truer than she thinks, that “she loves him very dearly?” as she said.