“It’s about a lover,” she said, “—one of the old-fashioned, head-long, hot-headed sort—Irish, of course!—you’d not understand—such things——” Her tongue and colour were running random riot; her words outstripped her thoughts and tripped up her tongue, scaring her a little. She drummed on the keys 358 a rollicking trill or two, hesitated, stole a swift, uncertain glance at him.
A delicate intoxication enveloped her, stimulating, frightening her a little, yet hurrying her into speech again:
“I’ll sing it for you, Garry asthore! And if I were a lad I’d be singing my own gay credo!—if I were the lad—and you but a lass, asthore!”
Then, though her gray eyes winced and her flying colour betrayed her trepidation, she looked straight at him, laughingly, and her clear, childish voice continued the little prelude to “Asthore”:
I
“I long for her, who e’er she be—
The lass that Fate decrees for me;
Or dark or white and fair to see,
My heart is hers ’be n-Eirinn i!
I care not, I,