hot down into
the golden light, striking great circles and reflecting the red gold of
the sky from their breasts as they wheeled just beyond the wall, with
steady wings wide-stretched, up and down; and each one, turning at full
speed, struck upwards again and was out of sight in an instant, above
the lintel. The nun watched them, her eyes trying to follow each of them
in turn and to recognize them separately as they flashed into sight
again and again.

Her lips were parted, and as she sat there she began to sing very softly
and quite unconsciously. She could not have told what the song was. The
words were strange and oddly divided, and there was a deadly sadness in
a certain interval that came back almost with every stave. But the voice
itself was beautiful beyond all comparison with ordinary voices, full of
deep and touching vibrations and far harmonics, though she sang so
softly, all to herself. Notes like hers haunt the ears--and sometimes
the heart--when she who sang them has been long dead, and many would
give much to hear but a breath of them again.

It was hard for Maria Addolorata not to sing sometimes, when she was
all alone in her cell, though it was so strictly forbidden. Singing is a
gift of expression, when it is a really natural gift, as much as speech
and gesture and the smile on the lips, with the one difference that it
is a keener pleasure to him or her that sings than gesture or speech can
possibly be. Music, and especially singing, are a physical as well as an
intellectual expression, a pleasure of the body as well as a
'delectation' of the soul. To sing naturally and spontaneously is most
generally an endowment of natures physically strong and rich by the
senses, independently of the mind, though melody may sometimes be the
audible translation of a silent thought as well as the unconscious
speech of wordless passion.

And in Maria's song there was a strain of that something unknown and
fatal, which the nuns sometimes saw in her face and which was in her
eyes now, as she sang; for they no longer followed the circling of the
swallows, but grew fixed and dark, with fiery reflexions from the sunset
sky, and the regular features grew white and straight and square against
the deepening shadows within the narrow room. The deep voice trembled a
little, and the shoulders had a short, shivering movement under the
heavy folds of the dark veil, as the sensation of a presence ran through
her and made her shudd