"Henry Maine Griswold," he said in his most official manner, "I hereby appoint you a major on my staff with all the rights, privileges and embarrassments thereunto belonging, and you shall to-morrow attend me personally in my inspection of our troops in the field."
As the guitar was placed in Griswold's hands, Ardmore caused all the lights to be turned out save those on the table. In the soft candle-glow Ardmore bent his face upon Jerry, who had been merrily chaffing him at intervals, but who feigned at other times an utter ignorance of his presence on earth. As Griswold's voice rose in the mellow dusk it seemed to Ardmore that the song spoke things he could not, like his friend, put into utterance, and something fine and sweet and hallowed—that sweet sabbath of the soul that comes with first love—possessed him, and he ceased looking at Jerry, but bent his head and was lost in dreams. For the song and the voice were both beyond what the company had expected. It was an old air that Griswold sang, and it gave charm to his words, which were those of a man who loves deeply and who dares speak them to the woman he loves. They rose and fell in happy cadences, and every word rang clear. In the longer lines of the song there was a quickening of time that carried the sense of passion, and Griswold lifted his head when he uttered them and let them cry out of him.
One of Barbara's white roses had fallen into her lap and she played with it idly; but after the first verse it slipped from her fingers and she folded her arms on the table and bent her gaze on the quiet flame of the candle before her. And this was the song that Griswold sang:
Fair winds and golden suns
Down the year's dim aisles of gray depart;
But you are the dear white rose of the world
That I hide in my heart.
Last leaves, and the first wild snow,
And the earth through an iron void is whirled;