What is that moving within the room? A figure; perhaps one of ‘the dim shades, as like ghosts they go and come.’ So dull are our senses, when night is falling, that even he did not recognise whose form it was; it was not to a sight, but to a sound, that his nerves suddenly thrilled, and his senses became tense and alert. As he stood, a chord was struck upon a piano within--another. A slight shiver shook him, but still he was not convinced until a voice floated out--the softly melodious voice which he knew in every fibre of his heart, not loudly, but with a subdued intensity of feeling which made him also absolutely tremble. For the song she sang brought hopes, doubts, fears--and again, wild and tremulous, chaotic hopes, crowding into his mind. It was the homely old German _Volkslied_-- ‘Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.’ To every word his heart throbbed, as she apostrophised, with the abandon of one who believes herself unheard and unlistened to, that absent one-- ‘Thou, love, shrined in my heart, Thou, love, shrined in my mind!’ and sang how he ‘caused her much pain, and knew not how much he was loved.’ A pause after that, till she went on to the second verse-- ‘So, love, e’en as I love thee, So, so, by thee I’d be loved.’ ‘For,’ said the song, ‘I must ever be drawn most tenderly towards thee.’ (‘Die, die, zärtlichsten Triebe Fühle ich ewig auf Dich.’) Towards thee--towards whom? Her voice vibrated, almost failed, as she went on with a sad, pondering accent, to the wonder expressed in the third verse, as to whether _he_, that absent one of the careless spirit, might be trusted, as he might trust to her; and the notes swelled out again-- ‘Weiss’ nicht wie gut ich Dir bin.’ Myles’s head had sunk down upon his arms. The wonder, the mystery, the wild hope, that came surging over his heart almost unmanned him, and still the voice floated out, as she sang the last verse of the song. _Could_ it be? Might he dare to hope that, as she chose _that_ hour, that place, that song in which to express her feeling, that it _was_ he--for she was singing now-- ‘My love, when in the distance In dreams thy face I see, My heart, with fond insistance, Turns evermore to thee.’ Whose face? Her voice had faltered with the energy of her own feeling, on the last lines-- ‘Dann, dann, wünsch ich so gerne, Dass uns die Liebe vereint!’ She sang the last cadences again, as if she could not leave them, as if weary of waiting and separation-- ‘Ja, ja, ja, ja! Dass uns die Liebe vereint!’ With a heart full of the wildest, most chaotic doubt, wonder, surmise, Myles stood, his head raised again, his dark eyes burning, as their wont was when he was agitated, upon the open window. The dusk was too deep now for him to see anything in the room. His brain, his heart, all of him, were thrilling with the aspiration conveyed in the last untranslatable words of the song--the passionate, simple, primitive--