sible,
for the shadow of the tree hid all his figure. One might almost have
expected to catch a glimmer of two motionless wings bearing up that
face, so fair it was.

To Silvia it was as if another self, who grieved also, but who
could speak, were uttering all her pain, and lightening it so. She
recognized Claudio's voice. He was the chief singer in the cathedral,
and sang like an angel. She was afraid that Claudio had done very
wrong in not being a priest, but, for all that, she had often found
her devotion increased by his singing. The Christmas night would not
have been half so joyful lacking his _Adeste Fideles_; the _Stabat
Mater_ sung by him in Holy Week made her tears of religious sorrow
burst forth afresh; and when on Easter morning he sang the _Gloria_
it had seemed to her that the heavens were opening.

For all that, however, he had been to her not a person, but a voice.
That he should come here and express her sorrow made him seem
different. For the first time she looked at his face. By daylight it
was thin and finely featured, and of a clear darkness like shaded
water, through which the faintest tinge of color is visible. In this
transfigurating moonlight it became of a luminous whiteness.

The song ended, the singer turned his head slightly and looked up at
Silvia's window. She did not draw back. There was no recognition of
any human sympathy with him, and no slightest consciousness of that
airy and silent friendship which had long been weaving itself over the
tops of the mountains that separated them. How could she know that
Claudio had sung for her, and that it had been the measure of his
success to see her head droop or lift as he sang of sorrow and pain or
of joy and triumph? The choir had their post over the door; and,
besides, she never glanced up even in going out. Therefore she gazed
down into his uplifted face with a sweet and sorrowful tranquillity,
her soul pure and candid to its uttermost depths.

For Claudio, who had sung to express his sympathy for her, but had not
dreamed of seeing her, it was as if the dark-blue sky above had opened
and an angel had looked out when he saw her face. He could only
stretch his clasped hands toward her.

The gesture made her weep anew, for it was like human kindness. She
hid her face in her handkerchief, and he saw her wipe the tears away
again and again.

Claudio remembered a note he carried. It had been written the night
before--not with any hope of he