hortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourth
of July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro table,
ridden a saddled Texan steer on a bet, and disappeared with a fractured
collarbone. All this my aunt told me huskily, wanderingly, as though she
were talking in the weak lapses of illness.

"Well, we have come to better things than the old _Trovatore_ at any
rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well-meant effort at jocularity.

Her lip quivered and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth.
From behind it she murmured, "And you have been hearing this ever
since you left me, Clark?" Her question was the gentlest and saddest of
reproaches.

The second half of the program consisted of four numbers from the
_Ring_, and closed with Siegfried's funeral march. My aunt wept quietly,
but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rainstorm.
From time to time her dim eyes looked up at the lights which studded the
ceiling, burning softly under their dull glass globes; doubtless they
were stars in truth to her. I was still perplexed as to what measure of
musical comprehension was left to her, she who had heard nothing but
the singing of gospel hymns at Methodist services in the square frame
schoolhouse on Section Thirteen for so many years. I was wholly unable
to gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or worked into
bread, or milked into the bottom of a pail.

The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in the
shining current of it; I never knew how far it bore her, or past what
happy islands. From the trembling of her face I could well believe that
before the last numbers she had been carried out where the myriad graves
are, into the gray, nameless burying grounds of the sea; or into some
world of death vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hope
has lain down with hope and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept.

The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall chattering
and laughing, glad to relax and find the living level again, but my
kinswoman made no effort to rise. The harpist slipped its green felt
cover over his instrument; the flute players shook the water from their
mouthpieces; the men of the orchestra went out one by one, leaving the
stage to the chairs and music stands, empty as a winter cornfield.

I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. "I don't
want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!"

I