Well Judith Moore sang the words of the song, but she did more. Her vibrant voice expressed all the pathos, the romance, the tenderness, that lives between the words; and in the last two lines there was a sort of timorous triumph, as of one who has gained victory over the world, her family, her own fears, and won to her lover's breast, and yet trembles in her triumph. Women do not give themselves even to their best beloved without tears.
This was in reality the great charm of Judith's singing—a charm no perfection of method, no quality of tone could have produced. She felt the full significance of everything she sang, and had that sympathetic magnetism which creates its own moods in others. That is fascination. That is the secret of these women at whose power the world has wondered, whose loves have been the passions of history, whose whims have legislated the affairs of kingdoms.
"Don't sing any more," Andrew said when she finished. "I've had enough for one day. I—"
"You feel my music as I do myself," she said softly. "It is almost pain."
Presently they went back through the woods, more silently than they had come, and yet happier. Judith looked up at him once or twice with no veil of laughter on her eyes. He was thrilled with the expression he found there; now it seemed a steadfast ray of unselfish resolution, again a yearning so poignant that it almost unnerved him. He showed her the nest on the furrows.
"In a little while there will be birds in the nest," he said.
"Oh, I'll come and watch it every day."
"You must not come too often or stay too long," he said, "or the bird will get frightened and forsake her nest—fly away and never come back."
"Oh, surely not fly away from that nest," Judith cried. To her that rough little wisp of coiled grass and horsehair represented the perfection of bird architecture.
"If you would only come to the house—my house over there on the hill," said Andrew, flushing a little and very eager; "my aunt would like you to so much, and I would show you a lot of nests. We have more birds there" (suddenly feeling very proud of this fact) "than anywhere else in the county."