“Moving my seat into the light, I looked across the silent garden and little shining river to the highlands beyond. In the silvery glory the landscape came out like a cameo. The garden seemed alert and watching with a thousand eyes. Beyond the garden the slender river gleamed in its stony bed. Wasted by the Summer’s heat, it was too weak to grieve. In the lowland beyond the river a space of alfalfa ran to the first swell of the foothills. Upon the plain at the base of the rise, a great rock, deeply imbedded in the earth, and rising fifty feet above the surface, was all in shadow; but, as the moon overlooked the mountain crest, the top of the rock seemed slowly to rise from out the darkness and break into the white flood.
“This movement appeared so real and affirmative that I turned to Isola to learn if she had noticed it. She did not heed my action, but sat with her eyes fixed upon the rock with such a stare as one might have who saw the rending of the solid earth. Quickly turning, I saw that on the top of the rock a man was standing, with lifted face and folded arms. The pose was grandly pathetic. The form looked larger than human in the wan moonlight. I was about to break the silence with an exclamation, when a mighty voice, a noble baritone, came rolling across the distance, wave upon wave, bearing the burden of an old and half-forgotten love-song:
‘The God who wrought thee over-sweet
In Love’s old garden long ago.
Gave me the curse of wandering feet,
The power to know, and only know,
That even God shall not repeat
The agony of loving so!’
“When the refrain was reached I was thrilled as the singer substituted another name for the one written in the old song, and the night was stirred by a burst of passionate melody that will haunt my memory while I live:
‘Isola! Love, I love thee!