And some it moved to sorrow and some to regret, and some to an unearthly joy,—­then suddenly the song went wailing away like the winds of the winter from the marshlands when Spring appears from the South.

So it ended.  And a great silence fell fog-like over all that house, breaking in upon the end of a chatty conversation that Cecilia, Countess of Birmingham, was enjoying with a friend.

In the dead hush Signorina Russiano rushed from the stage; she appeared again running among the audience, and dashed up to Lady Birmingham.

‘Take my soul,’ she said; ’it is a beautiful soul.  It can worship God, and knows the meaning of music and can imagine Paradise.  And if you go to the marshlands with it you will see beautiful things; there is an old town there built of lovely timbers, with ghosts in its streets.’

Lady Birmingham stared.  Everyone was standing up.  ‘See,’ said Signorina Russiano, ‘it is a beautiful soul.’

And she clutched at her left breast a little above the heart, and there was the soul shining in her hand, with the green and blue lights going round and round and the purple flare in the midst.

‘Take it,’ she said, ’and you will love all that is beautiful, and know the four winds, each one by his name, and the songs of the birds at dawn.  I do not want it, because I am not free.  Put it to your left breast a little above the heart.’

Still everybody was standing up, and Lady Birmingham felt uncomfortable.

‘Please offer it to some one else,’ she said.

‘But they all have souls already,’ said Signorina Russiano.

And everybody went on standing up.  And Lady Birmingham took the soul in her hand.

‘Perhaps it is lucky,’ she said.

She felt that she wanted to pray.

She half-closed her eyes, and said ‘Unberufen’.  Then she put the soul to her left breast a little above the heart, and hoped that the people would sit down and the singer go away.

Instantly a heap of clothes collapsed before her.  For a moment, in the shadow among the seats, those who were born in the dusk hour might have seen a little brown thing leaping free from the clothes, then it sprang into the bright light of the hall, and became invisible to any human eye.

It dashed about for a little, then found the door, and presently was in the lamplit streets.

To those that were born in the dusk hour it might have been seen leaping rapidly wherever the streets ran northwards and eastwards, disappearing from human sight as it passed under the lamps and appearing again beyond them with a marsh-light over its head.

Once a dog perceived it and gave chase, and was left far behind.

The cats of London, who are all born in the dusk hour, howled fearfully as it went by.