Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/264

 sue for that love which was the only reward life held for him? He was very weary; he longed to speak; and yet one thought kept him silent,—his promise to Feuardent. He had sworn to tell her that very night the story of which she knew but the outside facts.

She seemed conscious of the struggle in his breast, for she suddenly turned to him and bade him tell her what was troubling him. He was still silent.

"I am sure it is something about Mr. Feuardent that you have to say."

"Yes, my child, you are right; you are always right. I have something to tell you from Robert,—a message, a story, I hardly know which."

"Let it be a story, you tell them so well."

And so he spoke, and told the story as he was gifted to do, with a concentrated earnestness and a repressed eloquence that held his listener breathless and expectant. It is a great gift that of the raconteur. In Italy it is considered a talent of the highest order, and is cultivated as carefully as a tenor voice. In that favored land the speech of the improvvisatore flows in rhymed numbers; but the greatest master of that rare art never had a more entranced listener than had Philip Rondelet as he told the story of Therese, of Fernand, and of Robert to Margaret. We all enjoy doing the things that we do well;