She was
always sorry, and he was always forgiving. She was superior in her
weakness, he was gentle in his strength.
And his heroine? She read through the mist that filled her eyes
and saw herself. The lofty heroine wooed by the poor and humble
musician who crept up from unutterable depths to worship unseen
at her feet! "The Phantom Singer!" The lover she could not see
because her starry eyes were fixed upon the peak! And yet he stood
beneath her casement window and sang her to sleep, lulled her into
sweet dreams,--and went his lonely way in the chill of the morning
hours, only to return again at nightfall.
She looked up from the sheet she held. She stared, not into space,
but at the face of David Strong, sitting opposite,--the phantom
singer. It was as plain to her as if he were actually there. She
looked into his deep grey eyes, honest and true and smiling.
What was it he said in his letter? About his nose and mouth and
eyes? They were before her now. That keen, boyish face with its
coat of tan,--its broad, whimsical mouth and the white, even teeth
that once on a dare had cracked a walnut for her; its rugged jaw
and the long, straight nose; its wide forehead and the straight
eyebrows; and the thick hair as black as the raven's wing, rumpled
by fingers that strove desperately to encourage a recalcitrant
brain; and those big, bony hands, so large that her little brown
paws were lost in them; and the broad shoulders hunched over the
table, supported by widespread elbows that encroached upon her
allotted space so often that she had to remind him: "I do wish you'd
watch what you're doing," and he would get up and meekly recover
the scattered sheets of paper from the floor.
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