“A woman! How could a woman get into the garden?”
The first speaker cast a troubled glance in the direction of the high wall.
“True,” he said uncertainly. “Still it must be.”
But involuntarily he moved a step nearer his companion.
Both glanced down at the slender feet in the grass. These seemed to move, and the spirit, or woman, turned her head swiftly from side to side. Her breath came quicker, but the monks could not hear it, or they might have taken courage.
“It is astonishing,” murmured Brother Emanuel, uneasily.
While they stood undecided between the attack and the retreat, suddenly from the chapel near by the organ gave voice in a deep, swelling chord, which climbed by subtle and suave modulations and soared aloft into a tender melody.
“It is Brother Angelo,” whispered Anselmo.
“It is holy music!” said Emanuel, devoutly, and he made the sign of the cross in the air before him.
The tremulous notes, growing louder, drowned the rustle of the leaves, the plash of the fountain, the sigh of the wind. It seemed as though the garden hushed half-unwillingly to listen, when a voice, humanly deep and sweet, but spiritualized into something not less than divine, took up the melody and bore it higher and heavenward, pouring out into the night a flood of ecstasy and aspiration. The march of the music was solemn and splendid, and its soul was a joy unearthly and beyond utterance.