"He leaned his head a little on one side, listening to the silence. Then he said to me, laughing: 'Is she as charming as all that? Or do you refrain from speech for fear of alarming her?'
"She stood quite still, her sharp-featured, tragic face, with its halo of reddish hair, raised toward mine, and her expression imploring, pleading, mutely compelling me.
"I had to answer his question.
"'Both,' I said.
"As I finished he called to her: 'I always knew you were lovely, Rica, but this is a real tribute—the dumbness of admiration!'
"She told me later that he had fantastically described her to herself after hearing her play, at the same time dwelling upon the happiness it was to him to think of her so. She had longed to make her affliction known to him, but for his own sake had not dared.
"'No one here will undeceive him unless you bid them,' she said, 'and you will not be so cruel! What has he left in life but this illusion? What have I but my love for him?'
"And she did love him! I had seen tenderness and pity leap from her eyes whenever they turned in his direction, and he—What should a man have done?" ended the clergyman.
The writer shook his head. "What did you do?" he asked rather hoarsely.