| “But the blue Alsatian mountains Seem to watch and wait alway.” |
The song of a woman alone, and then another, “A Warrior Bold,” and then “Alice, Where Art Thou?” And finally “Juanita.” They were songs his audience would appreciate. And all those four songs of tragedy he sang without banishing the beaming smile from his eyes. He might have been relating the woes of marionettes.
He passed from the scene to the sound of clapping hands, and when he returned almost immediately after that agreeable theatrical exit, he began to dance. He danced with the bride-to-be, and then with the bridesmaids. He found obscure girls who seemed to have been forgotten—who might be said to have had no existence before he found them—and danced with them with natural gallantry. He came finally to Sylvia, and she drifted away with him, her hand resting on his shoulder like a kiss.
“I thought you would never come to me,” she said in a lifeless voice.
“You knew I would,” was the response.
Her lips said nothing more. But her heart was beating against him; it was speaking to him with clarity, with eloquence.