"Tell me what I can do, Max?"
A smile curved his lips, half whimsical, half sad.
"You can do for me what you do for all the rest of the world--I won't ask
more of you," he replied. "Sing to me."
Diana coloured warmly. The first part of his speech stung her unbearably.
"Sing to you?" she repeated.
"Yes. I'm very tired, and nothing is more restful than music." Then, as
she hesitated, he added, "Unless, of course, I'm asking too much."
"You know you are not," she answered swiftly.
She resumed her place at the piano, and, while he lay back in his chair
with closed eyes, she sang to him--the music of the old masters who loved
melody, and into whose songs the bitterness and unrest of the twentieth
century had not crept.
Presently, she thought, he slept, and very softly her hands strayed into
the simple, sorrowful music of "The Haven of Memory," and a note of
wistful appeal, not all of art, added a new depth to the exquisite voice.
How once your love
But crowned and blessed me only,
Long and long ago.
The refrain died into silence, and Diana, looking up, found Max's
piercing blue eyes fixed upon her. He was not asleep, then, after all.
He smiled slightly as their glances met.
"Do you remember I once told you I thought 'The Hell of Memory' would be
a more appropriate title? . . . I was quite right."
"Max--" Diana's voice quavered and broke.
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