"Try it again, Dulcie!"

"Maybe you'll like this better," she said:

"Our Irish girls are beautiful,
As all the world will own;
An Irish smile in Irish eyes
Would melt a heart of stone;
But all their smiles and all their wiles
Will quickly turn to sneers
If you fail to fight for Erin
In the Irish Volunteers!"

"Hurrah!" cried Westmore, beating time and picking up the chorus of
the "Irish Volunteers," which Dulcie played to a thunderous finish
amid frantic applause.

She sang for them "The West's Awake!", "The Risin' of the Moon,"
"Clare's Dragoons," and "Paddy Get Up!" And after Westmore had
exercised his lungs sufficiently in every chorus, he and Thessalie
went off to their respective quarters, leaving Barres leaning on the
piano beside Dulcie.

"Your people are a splendid lot--given half a chance," he said.

"My people?"

"Certainly. After all, Sweetness, you're Irish, you know."

"Oh."

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know what I am," she murmured half to herself.

"Whoever you are it's the same to me, Dulcie." ... He took a few
short, nervous turns across the room; walked slowly back to her: "Has
it come back to you yet--that song of your mother's you were trying to
remember?"

Even while he was speaking the song came back to her memory--her
mother's song called "Asthore"--startling her with its poignant
significance to herself.

"Do you recollect it?" he asked again.

"Y-yes ... I can't sing it."

"Why?"

"I don't wish to sing 'Asthore'----" She bent her head and gazed at
the keyboard, the painful colour dyeing her neck and cheeks.

When at length she looked up at him out of lovely, distressed eyes,
something in his face--something--some new expression which she dared
not interpret--set her heart flying. And, scarcely knowing what she
was saying in her swift and exquisite confusion:

"The words of my mother's song would mean nothing to you, Garry," she
faltered. "You could not understand them----"

"Why not?"

"B-because you could not be in sympathy with them."

"How do you know? Try!"

"I can't----"

"Please, dear!"

The smile edging her lips glimmered in her eyes now--a reckless little
glint of humour, almost defiant.

"Do you insist that I sing 'Asthore'?"

"Yes."

He seemed conscious of a latent excitement in her to which something
within himself was already responsive.

"It's about a lover," she said, "--one of the old-fashioned, head-long,
hot-head