med softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
it...."

He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:

"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Que Cantes_--awfully
pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
Stilly Night_ again....

"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
Car