She buried her face in her hands. She was too weak to move. She was still sitting with her face thus hidden when he came down the stairway a moment later, calling back to the invalid,
"You'll be as good as ever when it's summer—"
The others were waiting for him at the foot of the stairway.
"Un-cle Pe-ter-" called Freddie Alden, "ask Dud to sing 'Who Knows' for you." Uncle Peter did.
And so with her pulse racing madly, with her throat so dry it seemed as though she could not breathe, Felicia Day sat and listened, listened with her trembling hand over her mouth to keep her lips from crying out. Listened to the first firm chords as Dudley Hamilt's long fingers moved over the keys, listened as he began to sing. He wasn't using very much voice, just enough to let the melody ring upward to Uncle Peter, round and smooth and inexpressibly caressing. He wasn't singing as though it mattered especially what he sang, indeed at first the phrasing was careless. But presently his voice soared more freely, it grew vibrant with longing.
"Thou art the soul of a summer's day,
Thou art the breath of a rose;
But the summer is fled and the rose is dead;
Where are they gone, who knows, who knows?
"Thou art the blood of my heart of hearts,
Thou art my soul's repose;
But my heart's grown numb and my soul is dumb—"
The song stopped abruptly.
"Sorry. Can't sing it.—'Night, Uncle Peter. 'Night everybody—" A door banged.
"Gad, he's a queer chap! If I had his voice I'd sing—" she caught the fatuous phrases of the man who had laughed but after that she was no longer sure of herself. She could only hear the muffled rise of her own sobbing.