y as earth upon the dead.

"When we next rade down Ettrick,
The day was dying, the wild birds calling,
The wind was sighing, the leaves were falling,
An' silent an' weary, but closer thegither,
We urged our steeds thro' the faded heather,
When we next rade down Ettrick."

Then came wild dissonance, and a minor like the wailing of the
wind--then once more the heavy, disconsolate chords, dirge-like,
apathetic. Her voice sounded like a voice wafting back across the river
of death in those last lines of all--so spent and inconsolable it was:

"For we never again were to ride thegither
In sun or storm on the mountain heather."

Amaldi sat very still, but his heart raced. Wonder filled him--wonder
and exultation and great pain. She was so marvellous to him--her beauty
of flesh and of spirit--now this added beauty of music. And this soul of
music in her was one with his. They were one in this at least. He felt
that if chance had been less cruel they might have been one in all
things. It seemed hateful and stupid, that the gross senselessness of
circumstance should have set them so far apart. When she ceased singing
he sprang to his feet, went close to her.

"You are wonderful ... you are wonderful...." he said shakenly. They
were both rather pale. She sat looking up at him in silence. Then she
said in a low voice:

"It is a joy to sing to one who understands as you do."

He repeated as if unable to find more fitting words:

"You are a wonderful, wonderful woman. There is no one like you. No one
... no one...."

"Dear Amaldi ... thank you," she said, much moved; and a little confused
by his impetuousness she rose from the piano, reminding him of his
promise to play for her. He submitted reluctantly. It seemed a pity, he
protested, to play after such singing. And now he flushed with the inner
tension of his thought, then paled again--for he was sure now, quite
sure, that love had failed her a second time; her own love as well as
another's. The passion in her voice had been the passion of
renunciation.

He began with an _etude_ of Bach. It was the nun in her mood that he
played to.

As an instrument the piano resembles a woman who speaks many languages
quite well. She speaks to aliens in their different tongues and people
think "what a clever linguist!" But sometime there comes one who
understands her own native language. To him her soul goes forth; he
draws from her true eloquence, the