Arise to thee; the children call, and I
     Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
     Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
     Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
     The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
     And murmuring of innumerable bees.”

She read it twice, soothed by its vague loveliness.  She could hear, however, only the sound of the suburban trains crashing by in the distance, and the honking of the machines in the Plaisance.  None of those spirit sounds of which Ray had dreamed penetrated through her vigorous materialism.  But still, she knew that she was lonely; she knew Ray’s going left a gray vacancy.

“I can’t think it out,” she said at last.  “I’ll go to sleep.  Perhaps there—­”

But neither voices nor visions came to her in sleep.  She awoke the next morning as unillumined as when she went to her bed.  And as she dressed and thought of the full day before her, she was indefinably glad that she was under no obligations to consult any one about her programme, either of work or play.

XXIV

Kate had dreaded the expected solitude of the next night, and it was a relief to her when Marna Fitzgerald telephoned that she had been sent opera-tickets by one of her old friends in the opera company, and that she wanted Kate to go with her.

“George offers to stay home with the baby,” she said.  “So come over, dear, and have dinner with us; that will give you a chance to see George.  Then you and I will go to the opera by our two independent selves.  I know you don’t mind going home alone.  ‘Butterfly’ is on, you know—­Farrar sings.”

She said it without faltering, Kate noticed, as she gave her enthusiastic acceptance, and when she had put down the telephone, she actually clapped her hands at the fortitude of the little woman she had once thought such a hummingbird—­and a hummingbird with that one last added glory, a voice.  Marna had been able to put her dreams behind her; why should not her example be cheerfully followed?

When Kate reached the little apartment looking on Garfield Park, she entered an atmosphere in which, as she had long since proved, there appeared to be no room for regret.  Marna had, of course, prepared the dinner with her own hands.

“I whipped up some mayonnaise,” she said.  “You remember how Schumann-Heink used to like my mayonnaise?  And she knows good cooking when she tastes it, doesn’t she?  I’ve trifle for desert, too.”

“But it must have taken you all day, dear, to get up a dinner like that,” protested Kate, kissing the flushed face of her friend.

“It took up the intervals,” smiled Marna.  “You see, my days are made up of taking care of baby, and of intervals.  How fetching that black velvet bodice is, Kate.  I didn’t know you had a low one.”

“Low and high,” said Kate.  “That’s the way we fool ’em—­make ’em think we have a wardrobe.  Me—­I’m glad I’m going to the opera.  How good of you to think of me!  So few do—­at least in the way I want them to.”