“No! I can’t allow you,” she said. “I superintend the laying of these pyres—I know exactly where the paper is—behold!”
The flame leaped suddenly through the light kindling, and as she watched it he felt that her interest in it was the simple unaffected interest of a child. Her dark-red gown enhanced her faint color; he accused the slight black velvet line that crept here and there over the cloth of trying to match her hair and eyes; then he turned his attention to her hands,—that were, he told himself, like swift little birds in their quickness and certainty.
Her father came to the door and hesitated.
“Won’t you come and share our fire, father?” Zelda asked.
“No, oh, no! I’m quite busy. It’s a very bad day, Mr. Leighton.” He turned and they presently heard him climbing the stairs to his room.
It was very still in the parlor, and the wind outside sobbed through the old cedars in accompaniment to the splash of the rain. It was very sweet to her to know that Morris was so near; there was in his presence in the house at this unwonted hour of the day a suggestion of something intimate and new. She was looking away from him into the fire when he rose and drew close to her.
“I have come to ask you to do something for me,” he said. “I want you to sing me the song—my song—the one that means—so much—that means everything.”
“I can’t, I can’t! Please don’t ask me,”—and she clenched her hands upon her knees.
“You hurt me once,—when you knew you did, when you wished me to be hurt, when I spoke to you of the song,—of my song,—of our song! But I want you to sing it to me now, Zee, and if you can sing it and then tell me that you don’t care,—that you don’t know what love is,—then I shall never again speak to you—of love—or anything.”
“No; I don’t know—the song. I can’t sing it,—ever again!”