sea in a shell: a lilt from _La Fille de Madame
Angot_, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard,
genuinely astonished, lowered his pipe and listened. To sit dreaming by
an open window, even in this unlovely first month of the year, in that
grim unhandsome city which boasts of its riches and still accepts with
smug content its rows upon rows of ugly architecture, to sit dreaming,
then, of red-tiled roofs, of cloud-caressed hills, of terraced
vineyards, of cypresses in their dark aloofness, is not out of the
natural order of things; but that into this idle and pleasant dream
there should enter so divine a voice, living, feeling, pulsing, this was
not ordinary at all.

And Hillard was glad that the room was in darkness. He rose eagerly and
peered out. But he saw no one. Across the street the arc-lamp burned
dimly, like an opal in the matrix, while of architectural outlines not
one remained, the fog having kindly obliterated them.

The Voice rose and sank and soared again, drawing nearer and nearer. It
was joyous and unrestrained, and there was youth in it, the touch of
spring and the breath of flowers. The music was Lecocq's, that is to
say, French; but the tongue was of a country which Hillard knew to be
the garden of the world. Presently he observed a shadow emerge from the
yellow mist, to come within the circle of light, which, faint as it was,
limned in against the nothingness beyond the form of a woman. She walked
directly under his window.

As the invisible comes suddenly out of the future to assume distinct
proportions which either make or mar us, so did this unknown cantatrice
come out of the fog that night and enter into Hillard's life, to
readjust its ambitions, to divert its aimless course, to give impetus to
it, and a directness which hitherto it had not known.

"Ah!"

He leaned over the sill at a perilous angle, the bright coal of his pipe
spilling comet-wise to the area-way below. He was only subconscious of
having spoken; but this syllable was sufficient to spoil the
enchantment. The Voice ceased abruptly, with an odd break. The singer
looked up. Possibly her astonishment surpassed even that of her
audience. For a few minutes she had forgotten that she was in New York,
where romance may be found only in the book-shops; she had forgotten
that it was night, a damp and chill forlorn night; she had forgotten the
pain in her heart; there had been only a great and irresistible longing
to sin