She felt that she saw more swiftly, and saw into more profoundly to-day
than ever before in her life; that she had a strangely clear vision of
minds as well as of faces, that she was vivid, penetrating. And she had
time, before she began to sing, for an odd thought of the person drowning
who flashes back over the ways of his past, who is, as it were, allowed
one instant of exceptional life before he is handed over to death. This
thought was clear, clean cut in her mind for a moment, and she put
herself in the sounding arms of the sea.
Then the pianist began his prelude, and she moved a step forward to the
flowers and opened her lips to sing.
She sang by heart the little story drawn from the writing of Jalalu'd
dinu'r Rumi. The poet who had taken it had made a charming poem of it,
delicate, fragile, and yet dramatic and touched with fervour, porcelain
with firelight gleaming on it here and there. Lady Holme had usually a
power of identifying herself thoroughly with what she was singing, of
concentrating herself with ease upon it, and so compelling her hearers to
be concentrated upon her subject and upon her. To-day she was deeper down
in words and music, in the little drama of them, than ever before. She
was the man who knocked at the door, the loved one who cried from within
the house. She gave the reply, "/C'est moi/!" with the eagerness of that
most eager of all things--Hope. Then, as she sang gravely, with tender
rebuke, "This house cannot shelter us both together," she was in the
heart of love, that place of understanding.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274