n her present mood she longed
to give out her feeling to an audience, and Lady Cardington was very
sympathetic.

In a minute she came in, looking as usual blanched and tired, dressed in
black with some pale yellow roses in the front of her gown. Seeing Lady
Holme at the piano she said, in her low voice with a thrill in it:

"You are singing? Let me listen, let me listen."

She did not come up to shake hands, but at once sat down at a short
distance from the piano, leaned back, and gazed at Lady Holme with a
strange expression of weary, yet almost passionate, expectation.

Lady Holme looked at her and at the desert song. Suddenly she thought
she would not sing it to Lady Cardington. There was too wild a spell
in it for this auditor. She played a little prelude and sang an Italian
song, full, as a warm flower of sweetness, of the sweetness of love. The
refrain was soft as golden honey, soft and languorous, strangely sweet
and sad. There was an exquisite music in the words of the refrain, and
the music they were set to made their appeal more clinging, like the
appeal of white arms, of red, parting lips.

"Torna in fior di giovinezza
Isaotta Blanzesmano,
Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

Tears came into Lady Cardington's eyes as she listened, brimmed over and
fell down upon her blanched cheeks. Each time the refrain recurred she
moved her lips: "Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

Lady Holme's voice was like honey as she sang, and tears were in her
eyes too. Each time the refrain fell from her heart she seemed to see
another world, empty of gossamer threads, a world of spread wings,
a world of--but such poetry and music do not tell you! Nor can you
imagine. You can only dream and wonder, as when you look at the horizon
line and pray for the things beyond.

"Tutto--tutto al mondo a vano:
Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."

"Why do you sing like that to-day?" said Lady Cardington, wiping her
eyes gently.

"I feel like that to-day," Lady Holme said, keeping her hands on the
keys in the last chord. There was a vagueness in her eyes, a sort of
faint cloud of fear. While she was singing she had thought, "Have I
known the love that shows the vanity of the world? Have I known the
love in which alone all sweetness lives?" The thought had come in like a
firefly through an open window. "Have I? Have I?"

And something within her felt a stab of pain, som