While I listened to the gladsome music, my glance strayed to Milly, but
she was almost hidden by the curtains of the tepee; and then to Ned, who
sat with his face turned partly away from us. I noticed that he looked
gaunt, and I found a bitter satisfaction in the thought that, perhaps, in
Helen's "three-four months" he had not seen, until that night, either of
the women with whose lives his own had been entangled.
"Just one more," begged Kitty, when Helen stopped. "You're my only hope;
do sing, Helen."
Dropping the mandolin, Helen began without accompaniment "The King of
Thule:"--
"'There stood the old carouser,
And drank the last life glow;
And hurled the hallowed goblet
Into the tide below.
"He saw it plunging and filling,
And sinking deep in the sea;
Then fell his eyelids forever,
And never more drank he!'"
It was the ballad she had sung at Christmas--in what different mood! Then
her voice had been as carefree as a bird's carol, but now it lent to the
limpid simplicity of the air a sobbing, shuddering sweetness--an almost
weird intensity that strangely affected her listeners.
When she had finished, something like a gasp went through the room.
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