Dita priva chè farò?
Dita priva chè farò?’
He felt that they were beautiful; their passion and their fire stirred the blood in his veins. He listened to the glorious end of a glorious scena, and then he shut up his book and waited for more. Then it was that Wellfield turned to something quite different, and sang:
‘Du bist wie eine stille Sternennacht,
Ein süss’ Geheimniss ruht auf deinem Munde,
In deines dunklen Auges feuchtem Grunde,
Ich weiss es wohl, und nehm’ es wohl in Acht,
Du bist wie eine stille Sternennacht.’
It is an exquisite romance, and he sang it to perfection. To Mr. Bolton’s mind it brought, as well it might, remembrances thronging fast of youth and love, and of a time when he had been young, and when he had wandered through the lanes of Wellfield on his Saturday half-holiday, or for his Sunday out, with a girl on his arm, whose presence was his paradise. In short, Mr. Bolton soon, to his own profound astonishment, found tears stealing from his eyes. He was thinking of himself, and of his own far-back joys and sorrows; he was in a twilight land, where he had long been a stranger—a country which all of us know, and which yet none of us with bodily eyes have seen—the country which is illumined by ‘the light that never was on sea or land’—the country in which strange plants grow—dried flowers to wit, and locks of hair tied up with faded ribbons, and bundles of old letters—the kingdom of romance.
Nita had changed her position; she had turned over on her side, with her face towards the sofa-back, so that it could not be seen. Her handkerchief was pressed against her mouth, her temples throbbed, her eyes were closed. She lay quite still, save that now and then a slight shiver shook her from her head to her feet. If it filled John Leyburn’s good honest heart with sweet, vague dreams which he had never known before, if it wafted her dry, business-like, prosaic father back into a nearly-forgotten land of faery and of dreams, what did it not do for her, attuned by nature as she was, to passion and romance? and how was she ever to find peace or freedom again?