"Put on a record, Allan, quick! Let's hear the voices of the past once more--human voices--the voices of the age that was!" she cried, excited as a child. CHAPTER VIII TILL DEATH US DO PART "All right, my darling," he made answer. "But not here. This is no place for melody, down in this dark and gloomy crypt, surrounded by the relics of the dead. We've been buried alive down here altogether too long as it is. _Brrr!_ The chill's beginning to get into my very bones! Don't you feel it, Beta?" "I do, now I stop to think of it. Well, let's go up then. We'll have our music where it belongs, in the cathedral, with sunshine and air and birds to keep it company!" Half an hour later they had transported the magnificent phonograph and the steel records out of the crypt and up the spiral stairway, into the vast, majestic sweep of the transept. They placed their find on the broad concrete steps that in the old days had led up to the altar, and while Allan minutely examined the mechanism to make sure that all was right, the girl, sitting on the top step, looked over the records. "Why, Allan, here are instrumental as well as vocal masterpieces," she announced with joy. "Just listen--here's Rossini's 'Barbier de Seville,' and Grieg's 'Anitra's Dance' from the 'Peer Gynt Suite,' and here's that most entrancing 'Barcarolle' from the 'Contes d'Hoffman'--you remember it?" She began to hum the air, then, as the harmony flowed through her soul, sang a few lines, her voice like gold and honey: Belle nuit, o nuit d'amour, souris a nos ivresses! Nuit plus douce que le jour, o belle nuit d'amour! Le temps fuit et sans retour emporte nos tendresses; Loin de cet heureux sejour le temps fuit sans retour! Zephyrs embrases, versez-nous vos caresses! Ah! Donnez-nous vos baisers! The echoes of Offenbach's wondrous air, a crystal stream of harmony, and of the passion-pulsing words, died through the vaulted heights. A moment Allan sat silent, gazing at the girl, and then he smiled. "It lives in you again, the past!" he cried. "In you the world shall be made new once more! Beatrice, when I last heard that 'Barcarolle' it was sung by Farrar and Scotti at the Metropolitan, in the winter of 1913. And now--you waken the whole scene in me again! "I seem to behold the vast, clear-lighted space anew, the tiers of gilded galleries and boxes, the thousands of men and women hanging eagerly on every silver note--I see the marvelous orchestra, many, yet one; the Venetian scene, the moonlight on the Grand Canal, the gondolas, the merrymakers--I hear Giulietta and Nicklausse blending those perfect tones! My heart leaps at the memory, beloved, and I bless you for once more awakening it!" "With my poor voice?" she smiled. "Play it, play the record, Allan, and let us hear it as it should be sung!" He shook his head.