The Deaves Affair. Footner Hulbert

smiling delightedly.

      When she came to the end of the song, Evan, fearful that she might open the door and find him there, hastened on downstairs. Miss Sisson was in her room at the back with the door open, and Evan stepped in for a chat, flattering the lady not a little thereby, for Mr. Weir was the most stand-offish of her gentleman roomers – and the comeliest.

      But it is to be feared she didn't get much profit out of this conversation, for Mr. Weir was strangely absent-minded. His thoughts were in the room overhead where the heart-disquieting mezzo-soprano was now singing a wistfuller song and no less sweet:

      "Phyllis has such charming graces

      I must love her or I die."

      Miss Sisson remarked in her most elegant and acid tones: "It's such an annoyance to have a singer in the house. I already regret that I yielded to her importunities."

      "You fool!" thought Evan. "She makes a paradise of your old rookery!"

      At the end of the second song he was sure he heard the singer's light footsteps travel to the door overhead, linger there, then return more slowly. The heart in his breast waxed big with gladness. "You blessed little darling!" he thought. "If it's true you want me, God knows you can have me for a gift!"

      Yet he let her sing another song before he stirred. He bade Miss Sisson good-night and went deliberately upstairs. She had stopped singing now. He knocked on the door.

      She took her time about opening it. "Oh, it's you!" she said.

      "Good evening," said Evan.

      "Good evening," she returned with a rising inflection that suggested: "Well, what do you want?"

      Evan was a bit dashed. His instinct told him, though, that he must put his fate to the test. In other words, he must find out for sure whether she detested him, or was simply being maidenly. She had not thrown the door open to its fullest extent, but Evan, gauging the space, figured that he could just slip in without actually pushing her out of the way. He did so.

      She faced about in high indignation. "Well! You might at least wait until you are invited!" she said.

      Evan had no wish to anger her too far. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said innocently. "I thought you meant me to come in." He turned towards the door again.

      "Oh, well, as long as you're here I'm not going to turn you out," she said casually. "But your manners aren't much." She closed the door.

      "It's all right!" thought Evan happily.

      "I heard you singing," he said, by way of opening the conversation.

      "Yes, I have to sing every night for practice," she said quickly. She wished him to understand clearly that she had not been singing to bring him.

      She sat on the piano bench, but with her back to the piano and her hands in her lap. Her expression was not encouraging. Evan sat on the sofa.

      "Please go on," he said. "Don't mind me."

      "No," she said, with her funny little downright way. "I shan't sing any more."

      "But why?"

      "You have provoked me. I can't sing when I am provoked."

      "What have I done?"

      "The mere sight of you provokes me," she said with more frankness, probably, than she intended.

      "I'm sorry," said Evan. "You're so different, so unusual, I don't know how to handle you."

      The first part of this pleased her, the last outraged her afresh. "Handle me!" she cried. "I like that!"

      Evan saw his mistake. "That's not the word," he said quickly. "I mean I study how to please you, and only seem to get in wrong."

      "Don't 'study'," she said with a superior air. "Just be yourself."

      "But I am myself, and it only provokes you."

      The brown eyes flashed. "Oh, you're too conceited for words!"

      This was a new thought to Evan. He considered it. "No," he said at last, "I don't think I am. At least not offensively conceited. But it seems to me you are so accustomed to having men bow down before you that the mildest independence in a man strikes you as something outrageous."

      This was near enough the truth to be an added cause for offense. She received it in an ultra-dignified silence.

      "I'd like to bow down before you too," Evan went on smiling. "But something tells me if I did it would be the end of me. You would despise me."

      Her mood changed abruptly. "I feel better now," she said. "One really cannot take you seriously. I'll sing."

      Her hands drifted over the keys, and she dropped into "Mighty lak' a Rose." The air was admirably suited to the deeper notes of her voice. The listener's heart was drawn right out of his breast; he forgot at once his fear of being mastered, and his great desire to master her.

      When she came to the end he murmured, deeply moved: "I can't say anything."

      She could have asked no finer tribute. "You needn't," she murmured.

      The pleasure she took in his applause was evidenced in the warmth she imparted to the next song. She made it intolerably plaintive: "Just a Wearyin' for You."

      Evan held his breath in delight. "If the words were true!" he thought. But though she sang with abandon, she never looked at him. He was artist enough to know better than to take an artistic performance literally.

      Nothing more was said for a long time. She passed from one song to another, singing from memory; dreamily improvising on the piano between. She chose only simple songs in English which pleased Evan well – could she read his heart? – the "Shoogy-Shoo"; "Little Boy Blue"; the "Sands o' Dee."

      Evan was incapable of criticising her voice. Some might have objected that it lacked that bell-like clearness so much to be desired; that it had a dusky quality, but Evan was not quarrelling because it was the voice of a woman instead of an angel. One thing she had beyond peradventure, temperament; her heart was in her singing, and so it played on his heartstrings as she willed.

      While he listened enraptured, he saw the moon peek over the buildings in the next street. He softly got up and turned off the impertinent gas. Beyond a startled glance over her shoulder she made no objection. He was utterly fascinated by the movements of the bright head, now raised, now lowered, now turned towards the window in the changing moods of the songs.

      Moonlight completed the working of the spell that was laid upon him. For the moment he ceased to be a rational being. He was exalted by emotion far out of himself. He experienced the sweetness of losing his own identity. It was as if a great wind had snatched him up into the universal ether, a region of warmth of colour and perfume. But he was conscious of a pull on him like that of the magnet for the iron, a pull that was neither to be questioned nor resisted.

      At the last she turned around on the bench again, and her hands dropped in her lap. "That is all. I'm tired," she said like a child.

      With a single movement the rapt youth was at her feet, weaving his arms about her waist. Unpremeditated words poured from him; words out of deeps in him of which up to that moment he was unconscious.

      "Oh, you woman! You are the first in the world for me! I know you now! I feel your power! It's too much for me. And I'm glad of it! I have waited for you. I looked for you in so many girls' faces only to find emptiness. I began to doubt. Love was just a poetic fancy, I thought. But I have found it. Let me love you."

      She was not surprised, nor angry. She gently tried to detach his arms. "Oh, hush! hush!" she murmured. "It is not me! It is just the music!"

      "It is you! It is you!" he protested. "I knew it when I first saw you. You or none!"

      "But how silly!" she said in a warm, low voice. "You have seen me twice."

      "What difference does that make?" he said impatiently. "One cannot be mistaken about a thing like this. I love you with all my heart. It only takes a second to happen, but it can never be undone while I live. You have entered into me and taken possession. If you left me I should be no more than a shell of a man!"