"I will marry you next month."
"Will you fix the day?" he asked.
She uttered a sudden, breathless laugh--the reckless laugh of the loser.
"Surely that cannot matter!" she said. "The first day or the last--as
you say, what difference does it make?"
"You leave the choice tome?" he asked, without the smallest change of
countenance.
"Certainly!" she said coldly.
"Then I choose the first," he rejoined.
And at the words she gave a great start as if already she repented the
moment of recklessness.
The notes of a piano struck suddenly through the almost tragic silence
that covered up the protest she had not dared to utter. A few quiet
chords; and then a woman's voice began to sing. Slowly, with deep,
hidden pathos, the words floated out into the night; and, involuntarily
almost, the man and the girl stood still to listen:
Shadows and mist and night,
Darkness around the way,
Here a cloud and there a star,
Afterwards, Day!
Sorrow and grief and tears,
Eyes vainly raised above,
Here a thorn and there a rose;
Afterwards, Love!
The voice was glorious, the rendering sublime. The spell of the singer
was felt in the utter silence that followed.
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