the most amazing of discoveries,
that the music of the spheres had been translated for his privileged
ears, that a door had opened allowing him to glimpse a glory hidden
from other mortals. It was not the existence of the singer, but of the
music, that excited him to adoration. He longed to possess it, to take
it with him, and to cherish it like a thing of substance, to worship
it in his solitude.

The song had been of love; but, after all, love was the burden of his
religion. Love filled the universe, it kept the worlds a-swinging, it
was the thing that dominated all nature and made sweet even the rigid
life of an anchorite. It was doubtless love which awoke this fierce
yet tender yearning in him now, this ecstasy that threatened to
smother him. Love was a holy and an impersonal thing, nevertheless it
blazed and melted in his every vein, and it made him very human.

Through all that night Fray Joseph lay upon his couch, rapt, thankful,
wondering. But in the morning he had changed. His thoughts became
unruly, and he recalled again that tantalizing perfume, the shy tones
of that mischief laughter. He began to long intensely to behold the
author of this music-magic, to behold her just once, for imagination
graced her with a thousand witching forms. He wished ardently, also,
to speak with her about this miracle, this hidden thing called melody,
for the which he had starved his life, unknowingly.

As the afternoon aged he began to fear that he had frightened her,
and therefore when he came to tread his homeward path it was with a
strange commingling of eagerness and of dread. But while still at a
distance, he heard her singing as usual, and, nearing the spot, he
stopped to drink in her message. Again the maiden sang of love; again
the monk felt his spirit leaping as she fed his starving soul even
more adroitly than she fingered the vibrant strings. At last her wild,
romantic verses became more unrestrained; the music quickened until,
regardless of all things, Fray Joseph burst the thicket asunder and
stood before her, huge, exalted, palpitant.

"I, too, have sung those songs," he panted, hoarsely. "That melody has
lived in me since time began; but I am mute. And you? Who are you?
What miracle bestowed this gift--?"

He paused, for with the ending of the song his frenzy was dying and
his eyes were clearing. There, casting back his curious gaze, was a
bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the