s passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate,
the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her,
how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on the
hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a
moment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness!

That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly
was. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he had
dreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart to
bursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on its
hook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Grio
occupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh from
her hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knife
to his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what she
had suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief and
humiliation, and----

He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breaking
the long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit the
sun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of the
tones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. But
when had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or so
young fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youth
and abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through the
half-open door of the staircase?

He crept to the staircase door and listened; yes, it was her voice, but
not such as he had ever heard it. It was her voice as he could fancy it
in another life, a life in which she was as other girls, darkened by no
fear, pinched by no anxiety, crushed by no contumely; such as her voice
might have been, uplifted in the garden of his old home on the French
border, amid bees and flowers and fresh-scented herbs. Her voice,
doubtless, it was; but it sorted so ill with the thoughts he had been
thinking, that with his astonishment was mingled something of shock and
of loss. He had dreamed of dying for her or with her, and she sang! He
was prepared for peril, and her voice vied with the lark's in joyous
trills.

Leaning forward to hear more clearly, he touched the door. It was ajar,
and before he could hinder it, it closed with a sharp sound. The singing
ceased with an abruptness that told, or he was much mistaken, of
self-remembrance. And presen