The melodious strains were always the same, and the air was strange to me. I had never heard it from a visible musician. Not to a living soul had I ever spoken of the delusion, and that the subject should now be introduced into our conversation, and not introduced by me, could not but strike me as of singular portent. As Mrs. Fortress asked the question I heard once more the soft spiritual strains, and I involuntarily raised my right hand in the act of listening; I hear them at the present moment as I write, and I lay aside my pen a while, until they shall pass away. So! They are gone--but they will come again. I answered Mrs. Fortress briefly, but not without agitation. "Yes, I have heard such sounds as those you mention." "You hear them now?" "Yes, I hear them now. Do you?" "My powers of imagination, sir, are less powerful than yours," she said evasively, and passed on to her second question. "It is not an English air, sir?" "No, it is not English, so far as I am a judge." "It comes probably," she suggested, and I was convinced that she spoke with premeditation, "from a foreign source." "Most probably," I said. "Perhaps from the mountains in the Tyrol." A Tyrolean air! I seized upon the suggestion, and accepted it as fact, though I was quite unable to speak with authority. But why to me, who had never been out of England, should come this melody of the Tyrol? I could no more answer this question than I could say why the impassive, undemonstrative woman before me was, as it were, revealing me to myself and probing my soul to its hidden depths. "It may be so," I said. "Do you seek for any further information from me?" "No, sir." But there was a slight hesitancy in her voice which proved that this was not the only subject in her mind which bore upon my inner life. "And now," I said, "I must ask you why you put these questions to me, and by what means you became possessed of my secret, mention of which has never passed my lips?" She shook her head, and turned towards the door, but I imperatively called upon her to stay. "You cannot deal with me upon this subject as you have upon all others. I have a distinct right to demand an explanation." "I can give you no explanation, sir," she said, with deference and respect. "You refuse?" "I _must_ refuse," she replied firmly, and then she bowed, and saying, "With my humble duty, sir," was gone. CHAPTER VI.