“As I crossed the park this morning I happened to hear a few notes of a voice that interested me.  I train the voice, Madam.  I teach certain kinds of music.  I took the liberty of asking the owner of the voice where he lived, and I have taken the further liberty of coming to see whether I may speak with you on that subject—­about his voice.”

This, then, was the stranger of the park whom she believed to have gone his way after unknowingly leaving glorious words of destiny for her.  Instead of vanishing, he had reappeared, following up his discovery into her very presence.  She did not desire him to follow up his discovery.  She put out one hand and pressed her son back into the room and was about to close the door.

“I should first have stated, of course,” said the visitor, smiling quietly as with awkward self-recovery, “that I am the choir-master of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.”

Stillness followed, the stillness in which painful misunderstandings dissolve.  The scene slowly changed, as when on the dark stage of a theater an invisible light is gradually turned, showing everything in its actual relation to everything else.  In truth a shaft as of celestial light suddenly fell upon her doorway; a far-sent radiance rested on the head of her son; in her ears began to sound old words spoken ages ago to another mother on account of him she had borne.  To her it was an annunciation.

Her first act was to place her hand on the head of the lad and bend it back until his eyes looked up into hers; his mother must be the first to congratulate him and to catch from his eyes their flash of delight as he realized all that this might mean:  the fulfilment of life’s dream for him.

Then she threw open the door.

“Will you come in?”

It was a marvelous welcome, a splendor of spiritual hospitality.

The musician took up straightway the purpose of his visit and stated it.

“Will you, then, send him to-morrow and let me try his voice?”

“Yes,” she said as one who now must direct with firm responsible hand the helm of wayward genius, “I will send him.”

“And if his voice should prove to be what is wanted,” continued the music-master, though with delicate hesitancy, “would he be—­free?  Is there any other person whose consent—­”

She could not reply at once.  The question brought up so much of the past, such tragedy!  She spoke with composure at last: 

“He can come.  He is free.  He is mine—­wholly mine.”

The choir-master looked across the small room at his pupil, who, upon the discovery of the visitor’s identity, had withdrawn as far as possible from him.

“And you are willing to come?” he asked, wishing to make the first advance toward possible acquaintanceship on the new footing.

No reply came.  The mother smiled at her awe-stricken son and hastened to his rescue.

“He is overwhelmed,” she said, her own faith in him being merely strengthened by this revelation of his fright.  “He is overwhelmed.  This means so much more to him than you can understand.”