"I would hear music," she whispered, "before I go again."

"Marion, you shall," I stammered. "Beethoven, Schumann,--what would
please you most? You shall have all."

"Yes, play to me. But those names"--she shook her head--"I do not
know."

I remember that my face was streaming, my hands so hot that her head
seemed more than I could hold. I shifted my knees so that she might
lie more easily a little.

"God's music!" she cried aloud with startling abruptness; then,
lowering her voice again and smiling sadly as though something came
back to her that she would fain forget, she added slowly, with
something of mournful emphasis:

"I was a singer . . ."

As though a flash of light had passed, some inner darkness was cleft
asunder in me. Some heaviness shifted from my brain. It seemed the
years, the centuries, turned over like a wind-blown page. And out of
some hidden inmost part of me involuntary words rose instantly:

"You sang God's music then . . ."

The strange, unbidden sentence stirred her. Her head moved slightly;
she smiled. Gazing into my eyes intently, as though to dispel a mist
that shrouded both our minds, she went on in a whisper that yet was
startlingly distinct, though with little pauses drawn out between the