I listened to their song, and
as I listened, some troubled memory came back to me that at first I
could not grasp. Then suddenly there rose up in my mind a vision of the
splendid chamber in Montezuma's palace in Tenoctitlan, and of myself
sleeping on a golden bed, and dreaming on that bed. I knew it now, I was
the god Tezcat, and on the morrow I must be sacrificed, and I slept in
misery, and as I slept I dreamed. I dreamed that I stood where I stood
this night, that the scent of the English flowers was in my nostrils as
it was this night, and that the sweet song of the nightingales rang in
my ears as at this present hour. I dreamed that as I mused and listened
the moon came up over the green ash and oaks, and lo! there she shone. I
dreamed that I heard a sound of singing on the hill--
But now I awoke from this vision of the past and of a long lost dream,
for as I stood the sweet voice of a woman began to sing yonder on the
brow of the slope; I was not mad, I heard it clearly, and the sound grew
ever nearer as the singer drew down the steep hillside. It was so near
now that I could catch the very words of that sad song which to this day
I remember.
Now I could see the woman's shape in the moonlight; it was tall and
stately and clad in a white robe. Presently she lifted her head to watch
the flitter of a bat and the moonlight lit upon her face.
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