“Only half a minute left,” he rejoined with gay raillery.  “I said you’d sing to them in five minutes, and you must.  This way.”

He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he hurried her to the ball-room.

Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness.  The blinds and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang.

Never in all her wonderful career had Al’mah sung so well—­with so much feeling and an artist’s genius—­not even that night of all when she made her debut.  The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling power the story of a soul.

Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard.  It was Jigger, enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it.  Al’mah turned towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness.  Then, after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod’s memorable song, “There is a Green Hill Far Away.”  It was not what the audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great chamber.  Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the song, and the soft night filled its soul with melody.

A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were those which gave them diversion.  They were wont to swim with the tide of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World.

Why had she chosen this song?  Because, all at once, as she thought of Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the misery of that time swept over her—­its rebellion, its hideous fear, its bitter loneliness.  She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her then, in the hour of her direst apprehension.  She sang it now to her own dead child, and to Jigger.  When she ceased, there was not a sound save of some woman gently sobbing.  Others were vainly trying to choke back their tears.

Presently, as Al’mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly up the centre aisle.  He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were sunken and wild.  Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow voice: 

“At the mine—­an accident.  The Baas he go down to save—­he not come up.”