There was silence as Jerome came in, and just glanced at Nita’s pale face, which looked almost ghastly in the white moonlight. He paused, and asked her if she felt rested. ‘Yes, thank you,’ replied Nita, with a little catching of her breath, which John at least noticed. ‘I am all right, but John is a tyrant, and says if I get up he will go.’ ‘Quite right, too,’ observed Miss Shuttleworth from her corner. ‘Would anyone like a light?’ asked Nita. ‘Oh, don’t light up! This moonlight is heavenly. It only wants music to make it complete,’ said John. ‘Wellfield, when you were a precocious infant of eleven, at which age I last knew you, you used to play tunes on the piano, and sing little Italian songs, which used to fascinate me. Have you forgotten how?’ ‘Not utterly, though I have no doubt fallen off from the first engaging innocence of childhood.’ ‘Well, won’t you give us a specimen,’ said the benighted barbarian—‘if Nita is not too tired?’ he added, turning to her. ‘I—oh no! if Mr. Wellfield will sing, I should like it,’ said Nita, utterly unconscious that she was invoking the most powerful of the weapons of fascination possessed by her hero, and anxious only to preserve a little longer the friendly moonlight. ‘Certainly, if one could ever sing at all, one would be able to do so in such a place, and with such surroundings as these, observed Jerome, carelessly, as he struck a chord or two. ‘Ah! your piano is a Bechstein, Miss Bolton; you might have imported it on purpose for me. All I stipulate is, that you will cry “Hold!” in a loud voice, when you have had enough of it.’ He tried his hand with a half-forgotten impromptu of Schubert’s, and with each bar that he played the old spirit came back to him. He had not touched a note since the night he had sung to Sara Ford, at Trockenau. Did he remember it? It may be so, but if he did, he carefully abstained from giving any of the songs he had sung on that eventful night. Perhaps the present audience were not worthy. At first he did not sing at all, but wandered on through some strange, cobwebby melodies of Schumann and Chopin—strange melodies, such as had probably never before palpitated through that ancient room, since it was first built, for an abbot’s refectory. At first he thought he would not sing at all; but with the flow of sound, and the exercise of the beloved art, the old intoxication and exaltation stole gradually over him. He paused a moment, struck a couple of weirdly sounding minor chords, and sang the strangely suggestive lines beginning: ‘O Death, that makest life so sweet! O Fear, with mirth before thy feet! What have ye yet in store for us? The conquerors, the glorious?’