When it was time to go, he took leave with reluctance. The talk had
grown very pleasantly familiar. Mrs. Hannaford said she hoped they
would often see him, and the hope had an echo in his own thoughts.
This house might offer him the refuge he sought when loneliness
weighed too heavily. It was true, he could not accept the idea with
a whole heart; some vague warning troubled his imagination; but on
the way home he thought persistently of the pleasure he had
experienced, and promised himself that it should be soon repeated.
A melody was singing in his mind; becoming conscious of it, he
remembered that it was the air to which his friend Moncharmont had
set the little song of Alfred de Musset. At Odessa he had been wont
to sing it--in a voice which Moncharmont declared to have the
quality of a very fair tenor, and only to need training.
"Quand on perd. par triste occurrence,
Son esperance
Et sa gaite,
Le remede au melancolique
O'est la musique
Et la beaute.
Plus oblige et peut davantage
Un beau visage
Qu'un homme arme,
Et rien n'est meilleur que d'entendre
Air doux et tendre
Jadin alme!"
It haunted him after he had gone to rest, and for once he did not
mind wakefulness.
A week passed. On Friday, Piers said to himself that to-morrow he
would go in the afternoon to Campden Hill, on the chance of finding
his friends at home.
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