ay, and seemed at once to arouse an airier and finer
spirit among the humming clusters. Mr. Laudersdale did not join his
wife, but sat on the piazza talking with Mr. McLean. People were looking
at an herbal, others coquetting, others quiet. Some one mentioned music.
Directly afterward, Mr. Raleigh rose and approached the piano. Every
one turned. Taking his seat, he threw out a handful of rich chords; the
instrument seemed to diffuse a purple cloud; then, buoyed over perfect
accompaniment, the voice rose in that one love-song of the world. What
depth of tenderness is there from which the "Adelaide" does not sound?
What secret of tragedy, too? Singing, he throbbed through it a vitality
as if the melody surcharged with beauty grew from his soul, and were his
breath of life, indeed. The thrilling strain came to penetrate and
fill one heart; the passionate despair surged round her; the silence
following was like the hand that closes the eyes of the dead.

Mr. Raleigh did not rise, nor look up, as he finished.

"How melancholy!" said Helen Heath, breaking the hush.

"All music should be melancholy," said he.

"How absurd, Roger!" said his cousin. "There is much music that is only
intensely beautiful."

"Intense beauty at its height always drops in pathos, or rather the soul
does in following it,--since that is infinite, the soul finite."

"Nonsense! There's that song, Number Three in Book One"----

"I don't remember it."

"Well, there's no pathos there! It's just one trill of laughter and
merriment, a sunbeam and effect. Play it, Helen."

Helen went, and, extending her hands before Mr. Raleigh, played a couple
of bars; he continued where she left it, as one might a dream, and,
strangely enough, the little, gushing sparkle of joy became a phantom of
itself, dissolving away in tears.

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. McLean, "you can make mouths in a glass,
if you please; but I, for one, detest melancholy! Don't you, Mrs.
Laudersdale?"

Mrs. Laudersdale had shrunk into the shadow of the curtain. Perhaps she
did not hear the question; for her reply, that did not come at once, was
the fragment of a Provencal romance, sung,--and sung in a voice neither
sweet nor rich, but of a certain personal force as potent as either, and
a stifled strength of tone that made one tremble.

"We're all alone, we're all alone!
The moon and stars are dead and gone,
The night's at deep, the winds asleep,
And thou and I are all alone!