Yet no smile of triumph touched the fair face of the lovely queen of song as she sat there waiting. It was full of a wistful pathos that sometime deepened into pain. It was full of poetry and passion and sorrow. There was no light of gladness in the large and bright dark eyes, yet they were both brave and tender. It was only when she was singing that any brightness came into the grave, sad face.
Then she lost herself like a true artiste in the part she sang.
She looked up quickly as the professor entered with the book for which she had sent him, her white hand trembled as she took the beautiful, richly-bound volume.
"Thank you," she said, and her voice was so husky and low that the professor, her teacher and adviser, looked at her anxiously.
"Dolores, your voice sounds hoarse," he said. "I fear you will not be in voice for to-night."
"Never fear," she replied in a clearer tone, and then she turned away from him, and while he pored over the papers, glorying in the praises they showered on his gifted ward, she sat silent in the great velvet arm-chair with the beautiful volume shut tightly between her folded hands. She was not quite strong enough to open it yet. It seemed like a message from the dead. Ronald Valchester was as one dead to her forever, yet the best part of her lost lover, the heart's deep tenderness, the imperishable, proud, poetic soul seemed throbbing beneath the warm clasp of her hand.
It was several minutes before she could open the book. She, who had always loved music and poetry so dearly, sat trembling with her lover's poems in her hands and could not read them. She was dizzy—there was a mist before her eyes. The luxurious room seemed to fade before her, giving place to the green hills and dales of her old Virginia home.
She felt the cold winds whispering among the trees and lifting the careless curls from her brow, she smelt the "violets hidden in the green," she recalled the old, simple, lonely life which had been glorified for a little while by Ronald Valchester's love. Then with a start she came back to the present. Of that life and of that lover there remained to her only a memory now.
"And this," she said, opening the beautiful book and trembling all over as she read the dainty verses into which her lost lover had poured all the poetry and passion of a gifted mind and tender heart.
She read on and on. They touched her strangely, these gems of thought and feeling.