"I was just wondering," he answered, "where I had first heard it. It seems to be an echo of something that I knew years and years ago. And yet, I could fancy that it came out of my own brain, just as your verses come out of yours." "But I heard it from Monsieur Léon this morning," I said, "and it had a strange effect upon me." "Did the Frenchman play it? Then, depend upon it, I have got it from some old music book that I have not seen for ages. Only I can't remember playing it on my old guitar." "You never did," I replied. "I know all that you play. Poor Monsieur Léon has laid his spell upon those strings!" "You are getting fanciful, Louie," he said, looking wonderingly at me through the mist of twilight. "Perhaps I am. Monsieur Léon's talk to-day was fanciful; it might have been that his mind was wandering. He said that the guitar sometimes spoke to him of things that he could not understand, and then he played that very air. It is an air that needs a poem to interpret its meaning." "Well, why don't you write one?" Ronald asked. "I will try to play it again." He did play it again. And once more I felt the influence of the soft gladness—the faint, sweet triumph that was expressed in the melody. But when he paused, I shook my head. "It goes beyond me," I confessed. "I can find no words that will harmonise with that air. It leaves me with an inexplicable longing to find out its true meaning; but I think I shall never know it." "I have had that feeling once or twice in my life," said Ronald, musingly. "I remember a winter afternoon when I was waiting for a train in a strange town, and strolled into an old church to pass away the time. Some one was playing on the organ—a voluntary, perhaps—and the music came drifting along the empty aisles. I stood just inside the west door, and listened, trying to find out what it meant. But I could not tell." "Let us put the guitar away now," I entreated, catching the tone of weariness in his voice. "You have been sitting up quite long enough, dear, and there is a bright fire in the next room. What a chilly spring it is! This evening is as cold as winter." For a wonder he complied meekly with my request, and walked from the parlour into the bed-chamber with his arm round my shoulders. In a little while he was in a sound sleep, his head resting quietly on the pillow, while I moved gently about the room and put things in order for the night. I was too tired to sit long over my needlework, although a piled up work-basket reminded me that there was plenty of mending to be done. But, sleepy as I really was, that mysterious melody was still haunting my brain, and I found myself trying to set words to it unawares. Only fragments of rhyme came to me; bits of verses never to be finished; and at last I endeavoured to forget the air altogether. Yet even in slumber it came back, and again I saw Monsieur Léon's thin face and brilliant eyes, and heard his parting blessing.