She took off her hat and coat, to enter more splendidly. On her head, resting softly among the coils of ruddy hair, she put a wreath of violets, which grew everywhere at the Callow; a big bunch of them was at her throat like a cameo brooch. When she entered the band faltered, and the cornet, a fiery young man whom none could tire, wavered into silence. Edward, turning to find out what had caused this most desirable event, saw her coming up the room with the radiant fatefulness of a fairy in a dream. His heart went out to her, not only for her morning air, her vivid eyes, her coronet of youth's rare violets, but for the wistfulness that was not only in her face, but in her poise and in every movement. He felt as he would to a small bright bird that had come, greatly daring, in at his window on a stormy night. She had entered the empty room of his heart, and from this night onwards his only thought was how to keep her there. When she went up to sing, his eyes dwelt on her. She was the most vital thing he had ever seen. The tendrils of burnished hair about her forehead and ears curled and shone with life; her eyes danced with life; her body was taut as a slim arrow ready to fly from life's bow. Abel sat down in the middle of the platform and began to play, quite regardless of Hazel, who had to start when she could. 'Harps in heaven played for you; Played for Christ with his eyes so blue; Played for Peter and for Paul, But never played for me at all! Harps in heaven, made all of glass, Greener than the rainy grass. Ne'er a one but is bespoken, And mine is broken--mine is broken! Harps in heaven play high, play low; In the cold, rainy wind I go To find my harp, as green as spring-- My splintered harp without a string!' She sang with passion. The wail of the lost was in her voice. She had not the slightest idea what the words meant (probably they meant nothing), but the sad cadence suited her emotional tone, and the ideas of loss and exile expressed her vague mistrust of the world. Edward imagined her in her blue-green dress and violet crown playing on a large glass harp in a company of angels. 'Poor child!' he thought. 'Is it mystical longing or a sense of sin that cries out in her voice?' It was neither of those things; it was nothing that Edward could have understood at that time, though later he did. It was the grief of rainy forests, and the moan of stormy water; the muffled complaint of driven leaves; the keening--wild and universal--of life for the perishing matter that it inhabits.