The voice from within cried, "/Qui est la/?" "/C'est toi/!" whispered the
lover. Then the door was opened swiftly and he passed in with
outstretched arms.
Having decided that she would sing these two songs, Lady Holme sat down
to go through them at the piano. Just as she struck the first chord of
the desert song a footman came in to know whether she was at home to Lady
Cardington. She answered "Yes." In 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.
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