She wandered for hours, hungry and tired and frightened, though
this last she would not confess.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," she told herself over and
over. "Even if I have to stay out all night it will do me no
harm. There's no need to be a baby about it."
But try to evade it as she would, there was something in the
loneliness of this limitless stretch of hilltop that got on her
nerves. The very shadows cast by the moonshine seemed too
fantastic for reality. Something eerie and unearthly hovered over
it all, and before she knew it a sob choked up her throat.
Vague fancies filtered through her mind, weird imaginings born of
the night in a mind that had been swept from the moorings of
reason. So that with no sensible surprise there came to her in
that moonlit sea of desert the sound of a voice a clear sweet
tenor swelling bravely in song with the very ecstacy of pathos.
It was the prison song from "Il Trovatore," and the desolation of
its lifted appeal went to the heart like water to the roots of
flowers.
Ah! I have sigh'd to rest me.
Deep in the quiet grave.
The girl's sob caught in her breast, stilled with the awe of that
heavenly music.
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