“Who sang?” he gasped.
I sat motionless. Neither the Bonnie Lassie nor the Higher Fates had assigned me a speaking part in the crisis.
“Whose voice was that?” said the Little Red Doctor fearfully. “Am I hearing sounds that don't exist?”
Out of the deepest of the shadows came the voice, broken, and thrilling.
“Chris! Oh, Chris, is it really you?”
“Ethel!” said the Little Red Doctor in a breathless cry.
He stumbled halfway across the dim room, encountered a chair, and stopped. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. His voice had hardened suddenly to that of a cross-examiner.
All the appealing and dramatic fiction which the Bonnie Lassie had carefully instilled into her subject for this crisis—the once rich and careless butterfly girl now brought low in the world and working for her precarious living—went by the board. “I—I-d-d-d-don't know,” stammered the brown-and-gold fairy.
“You—don't—know,” he repeated. Then, vehemently; “You must know.” Silence from the dim corner.
“Have you come back here to make my life wretched with longing again?”