Had I only known what the decision meant to me; the hours of mental torment, the suspense, the dread loneliness, I would have obeyed the inner voice and hastened to Mary's side that very moment, stripping all wrong ideas and wrong impressions of their deceitful garments, leaving them bare and cold and harmless.
I did not know, and, for my lack of knowledge or intuition, I had to suffer the consequences.
Later in the evening, a yacht put into the Bay. It carried some ladies and gentlemen who had been on a trip to Alaska and were now returning south.
They called in for a few supplies, the getting of which I merely supervised. They asked and obtained permission from me to tie up at the wharf for the night.
After they had returned aboard and just as I was laboriously undressing, I heard music floating across from Mary's. It was the same sweet, entrancing, will-o'-the wisp music that her touch always created.
But to-night, she played the shadowy, mysterious, light and elusive Ballade No. 3 of Chopin. How well I knew the story and how sympathetically Mary followed it in her playing! till I could picture the scenes and the characters as if they were appearing before me on a cinema screen:—the palace, the forest and the beautiful lake; the knight and the strange, ethereal lady; the bewitchment; the promise; the new enchantress, the lure of the dance, the lady's flight and the knight's pursuit over the marshes and out on to the lake; the drowning of the unfaithful gallant and the mocking laugh of the triumphant siren.
The music swelled and whispered, sobbed and laughed, thundered and sighed at the call of the wonderful musician who translated it.
I was bewitched by the playing, almost as the knight had been by the ethereal lady of the music-story.
Suddenly the music ceased. I thought Mary had retired to rest. But again, on the night air, came the introduction to the little ballad I had already heard her sing in part. Her voice, with its plaintive sweetness, broke into melody.
She lilted softly the first verse,—and I waited.