“You breathed my name,—­I came,” she said.

“Pardon!” I replied.  “I heard the fountains dash and the nightingales sing, and I but came for rest under the spell.”

“And have you found it?”

“I have found it.”

We remained silent then, while floods of passion gathered and lay darkly still in our hearts.  No, no!  I know now that it was not so; yet I will tell it, tell it all, as I thought it then.

She did not stir; indeed, she had such capability of rest, that, had I not spoken, she would never have stirred, it may be.  She knew that my glance was upon her; for herself, she looked at the broad lilies that grew at her feet, and listened to the melody that seemed to bubble from a thousand throats with interfluent sound upon the night.  It was her repose that soothed me:  moulded clay is not so calm, the marble rose of silence not half so beautifully folded to dreamful rest, so lovely and so still no garden-statue could have been; the cool, soft night infiltrated its tranquillity through all her being.

As we stood, the nightingales gave us capricious pause; one alone, distant and clear, fluted its faint piping like the phantom of the finished strain.  Another sound broke the air and floated along on this too delicious accompaniment:  music, fine and far.  Some other lover sang to her his serenade.  The voice in its golden sonority rose and crept toward her with persuading sweetness, winding through all the alleys and hovering over the plots of greenery with a tranquil strength, as if such song were but the natural spirit of the night, or as if the soul of the broad calm and silence itself had taken voice.

  “Thy beauty, like a star
  Whose life is light,
  Shines on me from afar. 
  And on the night.

  “Each midnight blossom bends
  With sweetest weight,
  And to thy casement sends
  Its fragrant freight.

  “Each, air that faintly curls
  About thy nest
  Its daring pinion furls
  Within thy breast.

  “The night is spread for thee,
  The heavens are wide,
  And the dark earth’s mystery
  Is magnified.

  “For thee the garden waits,
  The hours delay,
  The fountains toss their jets
  Of shimmering spray.

  “Then leave thy dim delight
  In dreams above,
  Come forth, and crown the night
  With her I love!”

She listened, but did not lift her head or suffer the change of a fold; then there came the tinkle of the strings that embalmed the tune, and the singer’s steps grew soundless as he left the street.  A new phantasm crept upon me.  What right had any other man to sing to her his love-songs?  Did she not live, was not her beauty created, her soul given, for me?  Did not the very breath she drew belong to me?  My voice, hoarse and husky, disturbed the stillness, my eyes flamed on her.

“Do you love that man who sang?” I murmured.