Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/387

 which she walked? To merit her smile? To die for her?

When poets spoke of goddesses they thought of her.

Then softly, and yet all at once, as my amazed and incredulous eyes were fixed upon this miracle, the air was stirred in a way I had never known it stirred before. Something subtler than light came through it and touched me, and stole into my veins, and made my blood richer and indescribably precious in my heart. The flames of the candles swayed in a strange, intelligible, inexplicable sympathy with this new sense in me. The essences of all perfumes were poured in upon my brain and made me giddy with a rapture I had never dreamed life could hold. All at once and by no effort of my own I came into possession of some property of joy beyond the glory of light and colour, beyond the reach of perfume. It came from beyond where this miracle of womanhood against the light stood. It beat by her like wind, and yet it stirred not one petal of the flowers in her hair. But the influence of it possessed her face, and she who had been Grecian goddess became an enraptured spirit. What could it be? Had the gate of Paradise opened, and was some large and subtle and fine rapture flowing towards me and around me, and possessing me with rhythmical joy?

What could this new thing, this mysterious agony of delight be?

Then, like a flash, I knew.

It was the band!

It was the band, and I was hearing music for the first time in my life!

After that with me all grew dark and blank.

I had fainted.

I was found lying on the grass, and when I came to myself that being whom I took for more than mortal was kneeling beside me and bending over me, chafing my hands, and saying:—

"Quick! quick! bring a light and water! The poor boy has fainted." Others were around me, and some hurried away.

"Poor boy!" I thought. "Poor boy, whom she has touched!"

"What caused it?" she asked me, pushing my hair back from my forehead. "What a pretty boy he is. Do you know, dear, what caused it?"

"I don't know," I said, as well as I could; "I think it must have been the band. I never heard music before."

"Never heard music before?" she cried in astonishment. "Are you sure? Where have you lived that you never heard music before?"

"In Bracken Glen—a glen in the north," I said. "We have a mill there. Our people do not have music, and I never heard music until I heard it now."