And then the door burst open. Sonia stopped dead in the middle of a bar, and they both turned round to find Angelo Fardetti standing on the threshold. "Ah, no!" he cried, waving his thin hands. "Put that away. I did not know I had left it out. You must not play that. Ah, my son! my son!" He rushed forward and clasped Geoffrey in his arms, and kissed him on the cheeks, and murmured foolish, broken words. "You have seen it. You have seen the miracle. The miracle of the good God. Oh, I am happy! My son, my son! I am the happiest of old men. Ah!" He shook him tremulously by both shoulders, and looked at him with a magical light in his old eyes. "You are really what our dear Anton calls a prodigy. I have thought and you have executed. Santa Maria!" he cried, raising hands and eyes to heaven. "I thank you for this miracle that has been done!" He turned away. Geoffrey, in blank bewilderment, made a step forward. "_Maestro_, I never knew----" But Sonia, knowledge dawning in her face, clapped her hand over his mouth--and he read her conjecture in her eyes, and drew a great breath. The old man came again and laughed and cried and wrung his hand, and poured out his joy and wonder into the amazed ears of the conscience-stricken young musician. The floodgates of speech were loosened. "You see what you have done, _figlio mio_. You see the miracle. This--this poor rubbish is of me, Angelo Fardetti. On it I spent my life, my blood, my tears, and it is a thing of nothing, nothing. It is wind and noise; but by the miracle of God I breathed it into your spirit and it grew--and it grew into all that I dreamed--all that I dreamed and could not express. It is my Song of Life sung as I could have sung it if I had been a great genius like you. And you have taken my song from my soul, from my heart, and all the sublime harmonies that could get no farther than this dull head you have put down in immortal music." He went on exalted, and Sonia and Geoffrey stood pale and silent. To undeceive him was impossible. "You see it is a miracle?" he asked. "Yes," replied Geoffrey in a low voice. "You never saw this before. Ha! ha!" he laughed delightedly. "Not a human soul has seen it or heard it. I kept it locked up there, in my little strong-box. And it was there all the time I was teaching you. And you never suspected." "No, _maestro_, I did not," said the young man truthfully. "Now, when did you begin to think of it? How did it come to you--my Song of Life? Did it sing in your brain while you were here and my brain was guiding yours, and then gather form and shape all through the long years?" "Yes," said Geoffrey. "That was how it came about."