The troubadour unstrung his instrument, and, tuning it a moment softly at his ear, wandered into a symphony as sweet as falling flowers. His eyes, as he played, grew dreamy and remote; he forgot his purpose and his company; the spirit of the haunted place stole into his brain, drugging it to oblivion of all else. The words came, when they came, independent of his own volition, it seemed: “I know not what I love-- A shadow, a delight, Like the morning moon, Thin wraith of her that night Bared warm to my impassioned dreams, And now so cold and distant seems. “I know not that I love-- Yet one flower from its breast Doth breathe a sweeter perfume Than it ever once possest. And why this is I do not know, But only joy that it is so. “I know not what is love But a thing of whims and hates, Since what my dreams fulfil to me Her scorn repudiates The moment that my eyes, awake, Would close for ever for her sake.” He ended on a tumbled note; and to the sense of a sudden creeping in his heart. Something had moved on the threshold of the grove hard by. Bissy, his mouth agape, scrambled to his pudgy feet. “It is Madonna,” said the boy. And then, approaching Tiretta, he whispered, “you shall have the slipper, signore,” and, retreating, scuttled from the grove, ducking his obeisance to the lady as he passed. Tiretta remained motionless, a feeling of strange awe, of strange guilt at his heart. And, as he stood, she came on and passed him, and was gone into the grove. Its sweet and fitting apparition; her footfall had seemed to make no sound; her robe was white as mist; one moment she had turned her grave innocent eyes to his, whether in wonder or rebuke he could not tell, and so in silence had moved on. He almost believed it, in truth, to be a spirit, conjured up of his unconscious rhapsody. Had she heard it, marked it, resented it? He hardly knew himself of what he had sung; from what spring of unearthly emotion what passion had risen into expression. Only this he knew--that no thought of friendship, of loyalty to another’s interests had inspired him. Why should it have? It was no new thing for such abstract sentiments, bubbling up from the soundless deeps of his soul, to find on his lips their irresistible utterance. He was the voice on these occasions of something beyond his control, of something for which he could not be held responsible. He stirred, in a sudden revulsion of feeling. A little heat of anger overtook him, and he consigned Fanchette to the devil. It was she who had tempted him into this situation, with her common winks and becks and nudges, so to speak--tempted him, and only to be snubbed for his pains. Why should he submit to being thus passed over, as if he had sinned against some code of conduct or good taste? He would follow, and ask her Highness point blank if his presence in the grove was desired or not.