So evidently thought the undergraduate who lived opposite. For no sooner had she turned on her light than he extinguished his and took a seat in the window, which, a little above the level of hers, commanded an excellent view of Mr. Wycherly's parlour. His watch was shared by a white bull terrier, who spent long hours sitting on the sill.
That undergraduate was a rowing man, the Eights came on in another fortnight, and in the evenings he "did a slack."
He was musical, this undergraduate, possessed a piano and a pleasing tenor voice, and sometimes after dinner, although Jane-Anne would not have dreamed of interrupting her work for one instant to listen, she was vaguely conscious that the music was agreeable, and was sorry when it ceased.
One evening, however, she did listen, for there came from the house opposite strains that were, to her, curiously familiar; a queer, old-fashioned song, and then with a little leap of the heart she recognised a poem she knew and loved. The young man opposite had evidently been well taught, it was quite possible to hear his words. She stopped short in the middle of a complicated sentence to the effect that the aim of discipline is to produce a self-governing unit, laid down her pen, and, forgetful that the light was behind her, went to the window and leaned out.
The young man seated at the piano in the darkness of the room opposite smiled gleefully, and sang more loudly and with increased fervour:
"By those tresses unconfined
Woo'd by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheek's blooming tinge;
By those soft eyes like the roe ..."
Then followed the passionate Greek invocation with which each line of Byron's "Maid of Athens" concludes.
Miss Willows would doubtless have dismissed words and music as hackneyed and obvious. But her pupil had read the verses till she knew them by heart, feeling, as in the case of "She walks in beauty like the night," that Lord Byron had written them for her and about her; she had not heard them sung since her mother sang them to her when she was a very little child. Now in the soft spring night the once familiar strains came floating across the quiet street charged full of innocent and tender memories.
In the semi-darkness, Jane-Anne beheld a ghostly white dog, seated solemn and sedate on the window-ledge. The dog also noticed Jane-Anne, and while his master still passionately proclaimed the fact that his heart had passed into the possession of "The Maid of Athens," the dog pricked forward his long ears, after the fashion of a bull-terrier when interested, and wagged his tail. At that instant the music ceased with a crash of chords.
"Oh, you dear!" exclaimed Jane-Anne, and went back to her work.