He returned the pressure of her hands absent-mindedly, and she sought refuge in her room.
Keble was restless and turned towards the library through force of habit. A book was lying face down on the arm of his chair, but after reading several sentences without hearing what they were saying, he got up and poured himself a glass of whisky.
He would have gone to the piano, but Miriam’s superior musicianship had given him a distaste for his own performances. He wandered through the drawing-room to the dimly-lit hall, and found himself before the gramaphone. Every one had gone to bed, but if he closed the shutters of the box the sound would not be loud enough to disturb the household. At haphazard he chose a record from a new supply.
A song of Purcell’s. He threw himself into a deep chair. The opening bars of the accompaniment were gentle and tranquilizing, with naïve cadenza. A naïve seventeenth century melody, which was taken up by a pretty voice: high, clear, pure.
Those words! He leaned forward, and listened more intently.
“I attempt from love’s sickness to fly—in vain—for I am myself my own fever—for I am myself my own fever and pain.”
As though a ghost had stolen into the dark room, Keble started slowly from his chair. His eyes riveted on the machine, he paused, then abruptly reached forward to stop it, inadvertently causing the needle to slide across the disk with a sound that might have been the shriek of a dying man.
For a long while he stood holding the disk. Only when he became conscious of the startled beating of his heart did he throw off the spell.
He was staring at the record in his hands—the ghost. He dreaded the noise that would be made if he were to drop it on the floor,—even if he were to lay it down carefully and snap it with his heel.
He got up swiftly, unbolted the door, and walked out in the cold air to the end of the terrace, past the stone parapet, down the grassy slope to a point overhanging the shore of the lake. Far, far away, through the blackness, were tiny points of light, marking the location of the Browns’ cottage. His eyes sought a gleam farther along the shore, but there was nothing in all that blackness to indicate Miriam’s old cabin.