“You forget that I am going home to be married!” he replied gravely.
“Oh, a little flirtation beforehand need not matter.”
“I beg your pardon. A young girl’s love is too sacred to be trifled with. I will go on deck and listen because I adore singing, but I shall not try to make the young lady’s acquaintance.”
So in the silvery moonlight of that balmy September evening he went on deck with his friends, and saw, sitting apart, the man lightly touching the strings of a mandolin, while by his side stood his daughter, a slender, classically gowned girl in a simple robe of warm, white cashmere falling in straight folds, her pure, lovely face crowned with golden hair, lifted to the sky while she sang in notes of liquid melody:
“Last night the nightingale woke me,
Last night when all was still,
It sang in the golden moonlight
From out the wooded hill.
I opened my window so gently,
I looked on the dreaming dew,