“Do you know, Sweetness,” he said, lingering, “that you wear a delicate beauty to-night lovelier than I have ever seen in you? You are not only a wonderful girl, Dulcie; you are growing into an adorable woman.”
The girl looked back at him, blushing vividly in her sheer surprise—watched him saunter away out of her silent sphere of influence before she found any word to utter—if, indeed, she had been seeking any, so deeply, so painfully sweet had sunk his words into every fibre of her untried, defenceless youth.
Now, as her cheeks cooled, and she came to herself and moved again, there seemed to grow around her a magic and faintly fragrant radiance through which she passed—whither, she paid no heed, so exquisitely her breast was thrilling under the hurrying pulses of her little heart.... And presently found herself on the piano bench, quite motionless, her gaze remote, her fingers resting on the keys.... And, after a long 323 while, she heard an old air stealing through the silence, and her own voice,—à demi-voix—repeating her mother’s words:
I
“Were they as wise as they are blue—
My eyes—
They’d teach me not to trust in you!—
If they were wise as they are blue.
But they’re as blithe as they are blue—
My eyes—