He did not immediately reply. A flame shot up suddenly from the low fire, and showed me the thoughtful, dreamy look upon his face. At length he spoke.
"I was just wondering," he answered, "where I had first heard it. It seems to be an echo of something that I knew years and years ago. And yet, I could fancy that it came out of my own brain, just as your verses come out of yours."
"But I heard it from Monsieur Léon this morning," I said, "and it had a strange effect upon me."
"Did the Frenchman play it? Then, depend upon it, I have got it from some old music book that I have not seen for ages. Only I can't remember playing it on my old guitar."
"You never did," I replied. "I know all that you play. Poor Monsieur Léon has laid his spell upon those strings!"
"You are getting fanciful, Louie," he said, looking wonderingly at me through the mist of twilight.
"Perhaps I am. Monsieur Léon's talk to-day was fanciful; it might have been that his mind was wandering. He said that the guitar sometimes spoke to him of things that he could not understand, and then he played that very air. It is an air that needs a poem to interpret its meaning."
"Well, why don't you write one?" Ronald asked. "I will try to play it again."
He did play it again. And once more I felt the influence of the soft gladness—the faint, sweet triumph that was expressed in the melody. But when he paused, I shook my head.
"It goes beyond me," I confessed. "I can find no words that will harmonise with that air. It leaves me with an inexplicable longing to find out its true meaning; but I think I shall never know it."