Mad, undisciplined, lawless adoration now moaned, now cried aloud, in both air and words. What mattered the holy day, the avenging husband’s steel, the forsaken Santuzza, who was sobbing alone somewhere in that huddle of blind houses? Love was king. The pirate love who knows its stake is death; and, unafraid, tempts its fate. “_C’è scrito sangue so prala tua porta--; Ma di restarci a me non me n’importa!_” Then in a last burst of gloriously insane protestation: “_Si per te muojo e vado in Paradiso, Non c’entro se non vedo il tuo bel viso!_” And that yearning, wordless passion-fraught cry wherein supreme longing rushed beyond the bounds of speech. A rumbling mutter of the harp-strings. And silence. “The sublimated howl of a back-fence tom-cat!” muttered Caine, to himself; the garish brain-picture fading. A momentary, tense hush fell over the audience as the final chords trailed off into nothingness. Then, before the utter stillness could be broken by the burst of ensuing applause, another sound--hideously distinct, vibrant, long-drawn,--cut raggedly through the breathless quiet. The sound of a full-lunged, healthy snore. Caleb Conover was sleeping like a child. CHAPTER XIII MOONLIGHT AND MISTAKES The musicale was over. The first floor of the Standish house looked as though a devastating army had camped there. Caine, who had lingered for a goodnight word with Letty, glanced over the empty music room. “I wonder,” he said, “if there is anything else on earth quite so vacant as the place a crowd of guests have just deserted. They always seem to have carried away with them whatever local atmosphere there was and to have left behind a vacuum of desolation.” Letty did not answer. She was tired, nerve-worn, relaxed, after the evening’s strain. Characteristically, she was aware of a mild desire to make someone else uncomfortable. Someone who cared for her enough to be hurt. Caine suited her purpose to perfection. Hence the sheath of grieved silence that always brought him hastening to the anxious seat. The ruse prevailed now, as ever. “You aren’t unhappy about anything, are you, dear?” he queried solicitously. “Oh, no!” she replied, a throaty quaver in her voice. “_I_ haven’t done anything, have I?” came the second stereotyped question in love’s catechism. “Oh, _no_!” she returned briefly with full feminine power of making the answer read, “Oh, yes!” “But _what_?” he begged. “Oh, nothing!” with the rarified loftiness that precedes a plunge into the vale of tears, “Nothing! Nothing at all.” Nor was it until he had rung all the traditional changes on the query and had worked himself into a state of pitiable humility that she would consent to burst forth into the flood-tide of her grievances. “You made me so unhappy,” she wept. “It was all your fault. _Why_ did you do it? How _could_ you?” “Please--_please_ tell me!” he urged. “I don’t understand. How?” “That disgusting man! That brute you brought here!”