Of an evening, in the hot, placid south, he had listened to it come
floating over the sugarcane and through the brake and go creeping weirdly
under the magnolia trees. He waited, hoping, almost wildly--he knew it was
a wild hope--that there would be a reply. There was none. But presently
there came to him Baron's crude, honest singing:
"For you'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland before you;
But I and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Ben Lomond."
Telford drew in his breath sharply, caught his mustache between his teeth
savagely for a minute, then let it go with a run of ironical laughter. He
looked round him. He saw in the road two or three people who had been
attracted by the music. They seemed so curious merely, so apathetic--his
feelings were playing at full tide. To him they were the idle, intrusive
spectators of his trouble. All else was dark about him save where on the
hill the lights of the Tempe hotel showed, and a man and woman, his arm
round her, could be seen pacing among the trees. Telford turned away from
this, ground his heel into the turf and said: "I wish I could see who she
is. Her voice? It's impossible." He edged close to the window, where a
light showed at the edge of the curtains.
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