Page:The One Woman (1903).pdf/106

 "Tennyson's 'Break, Break, Oh, Thou Cold Gray Sea.' No poet ever dreamed that song as you have sung it, Ruth."

Never did he hear her sing with such feeling. Her Voice, low, soft and caressing with the languid sensuousness of the South, quivered with tenderness, and then rose with the storm and broke in round, deep peals of passion until he could hear the roar of the surf and feel its white spray in his face. Her erect lithe figure, with the small white hands and wrists flashing over the keys, the petite anxious face with stormy eyes and raven hair, seemed the incarnate soul of the storm.

"Glorious, Ruth!" he cried, with boylike wonder.

And then she bent over the piano and burst into tears.

"Why, what ails you, my dear?"

"Oh, Frank, I'm selfish to leave the children to a nurse and study music."

"Nonsense. Self-sacrifice is rational only as it is the highest form of self-development. It is your duty to develop yourself. Self is the source of all knowledge and strength; books are its record; the world exists only through its eyes."

"I'm afraid of it. I wish to give all to you and the children, not to myself. I want you all to myself, and you are growing away from me. I know it, and it is breaking my heart."

He laughed at her fears, kissed her and went to his study.