“For another thousand?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. “What song is it?”
And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give form to words that were so full of spell to him, she said deliciously: “Why, can you see a London drawing-room listening to me sing a Presbyterian hymn tune?” Without lifting her head from the pillow she began in a charming undertone, her gray eyes fixed on his:
“From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral strands,
Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sands.”
Blair, near her, turned pale. There rose in him the same feeling that she had stirred years ago in the little church, and at the same time others. He had lost his father since then, and he thought of him now, but that big, sad emotion was not the one that swayed him.
“Please stop,” he pleaded; “don’t go on. Say, there’s something in that hymn that hurts.”
Letty Lane, unconscious of how subtly she was playing, laughed, and suddenly remembered that Dan had sat before her that day by the side of old Mr. Blair. She asked abruptly:
“Why does the Duchess of Breakwater want me to sing?”
“Because she’s crazy about your voice.”
“Is she awfully rich?”