The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes,
and rose to leave the room.

"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were
about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that
were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see
again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the
happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh,
I pray God I may never hear that melody again."

There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave
Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of
the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature
who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant
farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds.

"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic
Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did
not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and
now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the
petrification of despair."

Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake
during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's
tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his
dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon
Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the
shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console
her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console