Falchion, when I heard a
voice that was new to me, singing a song I had known years before, when
life was ardent, and love first came--halcyon days in country lanes, in
lilac thickets, of pleasant Hertfordshire, where our footsteps met a
small bombardment of bursting seed-pods of the furze, along the green
common that sloped to the village. I thought of all this, and of HER
everlasting quiet.
With a different voice the words of the song would have sent me out of
hearing; now I stood rooted to the spot, as the notes floated out past me
to the nervelessness of the Indian Ocean, every one of them a commandment
from behind the curtain of a sanctuary.
The voice was a warm, full contralto of exquisite culture. It suggested
depths of rich sound behind, from which the singer, if she chose, might
draw, until the room and the deck and the sea ached with sweetness. I
scarcely dared to look in to see who it was, lest I should find it a
dream. I stood with my head turned away towards the dusky ocean. When, at
last, with the closing notes of the song, I went to the port-hole and
looked in, I saw that the singer was Miss Treherne.
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