"Another reason, four years ago, led me to confirm my former testament. From time to time I have informed myself concerning your movements and fortunes. The work you have chosen, my dear Agatha, I can but believe to be fraught with unusual dangers to a young woman. Therefore I hope that this home, modest as it is, may tempt you to an early retirement from the stage, and lead you to a more private and womanly career. This I make only as a request, not as a condition. I bid you farewell, and give you my blessing.
"Faithfully yours,
"HERCULES THAYER."
Agatha Redmond folded the thin sheets carefully. There was a mist in her gaze as she looked off toward the distant city lights.
"Dear old gentleman! His whole love-story, and my mother's, too, perhaps!" Her quickened memory recalled childish impressions of a visit to a large country house and of a solemn old man—he seemed incredibly ancient to her—and of feeling that in some way she and her mother were in a special relationship to the house. It was called "the old red house," and was full of fascinating things. The ancient man had bidden her go about and play as if it were her home, and then had called her to him and laid open a book, leading her mind to regard its mysteries. Greek! It seemed to her as if she had begun it there and then. Later the mother became the teacher. She was nursed, as it were, within sight of the windy plains of Troy and to the sound of the Homeric hymns—and all by reason of this ancient scholar.
There was a vivid picture in her mind, gathered at some later visit, of a soft hillside, a small white church standing under its balm-of-gilead tree, and herself sitting by a stone in the old churchyard, listening to the strains of a hymn which floated out from the high, narrow windows. She remembered how, from without, she had joined in the hymn, singing with all her small might; and suddenly the association brought back to her a more recent event and a more beautiful strain of music. Half in reverie, half in conscious pleasure in the exercise of a facile organ, she began to sing:
"Free of my pain, free of my burden of sorrow,
At last I shall see thee—"
The song floated in a zone of silence that lay above the deep-murmuring city. The voice was no more than the half-voice of a flute, sweet, gentle, beguiling. It told, as so many songs tell, of little earthly Love in the grasp of mighty Fate. Still she sang on, softly, as if loving the entrancing melody.
Suddenly the song ceased, and the reminiscent smile gave place to an expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like gaze was directed upon herself.
Quickly as she rose, she could not turn into the path before the gentleman, hat in hand, with a deep bow and clearly enunciated words, arrested her impulse to flight.