because--no more, no less is the truth--because she needed it: and
then the blank dismay that followed my failure, as with a kind of
shameful horror before a great purpose that my emptiness left
unfulfilled.

The very song came back that moved me more than any else she
sang--her favourite it was as well. I heard the twanging of the
strings her fingers plucked. I heard the words:

"About the little chambers of my heart
Friends have been coming--going--many a year.
The doors stand open there.
Some, lightly stepping, enter; some depart.
Freely they come and go, at will.
The walls give back their laughter; all day long
They fill the house with song.
One door alone is shut, one chamber still."

With each repetition of the song, I remembered, how at that time my
boyhood's dream came back to me, as though its fulfilment were at
last at hand; as though, somehow, that "door" must open, that "still
chamber" welcome the sweetness and the loveliness of her who sang.
For I could not listen to the music, nor watch her fingers moving
down the strings, her slender wrist and rounded arm, her foot upon the
pedal as she held the instrument so close--without this poignant
yearning that proved ever vain, or this shame of unshed tears my
heart mysteriously acknowledged. To the end, as you know, that door
remained unopened, that chamber still.

It was the singing of this sweet English bird, making articulate for