“You are a musician yourself?—­” she said, glancing up at him, “You play—­or you sing?”

“I do a little of both,” he answered, “But I shall be no rival to you!  I have heard you sing!”

“You have?  When?”

“The other night, or else I dreamed it,” he said softly, “I have a very sweet echo of a song in my mind with words that sounded like ‘Ti volglio bene’, and a refrain that I caught in the shape of a rose!”

Their eyes met—­and what Emerson calls “the deification and transfiguration of life” began to stir Sylvie’s pulses, and set her heart beating to a new and singular exaltation.  The warm colour flushed her cheeks—­the lustre brightened in her eyes, and she looked sweeter and more bewitching than ever as she loosened the rich sables from about her slim throat, and drawing off her gloves sat down to the piano.  Florian Varillo lounged near her—­she saw him not at all,—­Angela came up to ask if she could play an accompaniment for her,—­but she shook her bright head in a smiling negative, and her small white fingers running over the keys, played a rippling passage of a few bars while she raised her clear eyes to Aubrey and asked him,—­

“Do you know an old Brittany song called ‘Le Palais D’Iffry’?  No?  It is just one of those many songs of the unattainable,—­the search for the ‘Fortunate Isles’, or the ‘Fata Morgana’ of happiness.”

“Is happiness nothing but a ‘Fata Morgana’?’” asked Aubrey gently, “Must it always vanish when just in sight?”

His eyes grew darkly passionate as he spoke, and again Sylvie’s heart beat high, but she did not answer in words,—­softening the notes of her prelude she sang in a rich mezzo-soprano, whose thrilling tone penetrated to every part of the room, the quaint old Breton ballad,

“Il serait un roi!  Mais quelqu’un a dit, ’Non!—­Pas pour toi!  ’Reste en prison,—­ecoute le chant d’amour, ’Et le doux son des baisers que la Reine a promit ’A celui qui monte, sans peur et sans retour Au Palais D’Iffry!’ Helas, mon ami, C’est triste d’ecouter le chanson sans le chanter aussi!”

Aubrey listened to the sweet far-reaching notes—­“Sans peur, et sans retour, au Palais D’Iffry”!  Thither would he climb—­to that enchanted palace of love with its rainbow towers glittering in the “light that never was on sea or land”—­to the throne of that queen whose soft eyes beckoned him—­whose kiss waited for him—­everything now must be for her—­all the world for her sake, willingly lost or willingly won!  And what of the work he had undertaken?  The people to whom he had pledged his life?  The great Christ-message he had determined to re-preach for the comfort of the million lost and sorrowful?  His brows contracted,—­and a sudden shadow of pain clouded the frank clearness of his eyes.  Gherardi’s words came back to his memory,—­“You have embarked in a most hopeless cause!  You will help the helpless, and as soon as they are rescued out of trouble they will turn and rend you,—­you will try to teach them the inner mysteries of God’s working and they will say you are possessed of a devil!” Then he thought of another and grander saying—­“Whoso, putting his hand to the plough, looketh back, is not fit for the Kingdom of God!—­” and over all rang the enchanting call of the siren’s voice—­