Moths by Ouida — page 184: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

fe ee MOTE 1 OO a She sat quite still and did not lift her eyes. The crowd moved end screened her from his view. ‘Will she understand?” he thought, as the applause of the polite crowd around him followed on the breathless stillness of delight with which they had listened. He heard nothing that they said to him. He was looking at her in the distance, where she sat with the great white fan dropped upon her knee and her eyelids drooped over her eyes. He was thinking as he looked— ‘‘ And that brute goes with a quadroon to a restaurant! And when she had a dead child born to her, he went all the while with Jeanne de Sonnaz to masked bails and court fetes on the ice!’ | Over his mobile face as he mused a dark shadow went—the shadow of passionate disgust and of futile wrath. His hands strayed a little over the keys, toying with memories of Chopin, and Beethoven, and Palestrina. Then, to the air of a Salutaris Hostia that he had composed and sung for a great mass in.Notre Dame years before, he sang, clear and low asa mavis’ call at daybreak to its love, the Priere of a French poet. ' She could not.see him for the throngs of grand people and giddy people who surged about him in their decorations and their jewels, but the first notes of his voice came to her clear as a bird’s call at daybreak to its love. He sang toa melody in the minor of his own the simple pathetic verses of a young poet: - ‘* PRIERE. ** Ah! si vous saviez comme on pleure De vivre seul et sans foyers, Quelquefois devant ma demeure Vous passeriez. **Si vous saviez ce que fait naitre Dans l’ame triste un pur regard, Vous regarderiez ma fenetre, Comme au hasard. &¢Si vous saviez quel baume apporte Au coeur la presence d’un coeur, Vous yous assoiriez sous ma porte, Comme une soeur. ** $i vous saviez que je vous aime, Surtout si vous savyiez comment, Vous entreriez peut-etre meme _ Tout simplement.”? His voice sank to silence as softly as a rose-leaf falls to earth,: Then there arose, like the buzz of a thousand insects, the adoz ) jug applause of a polished society. » **Si vous saviez que je vous aime, » iy surtout si vous saviez comment, ie Yous entreriez peut-etre meme ‘Tout simplement}’? P S vil 900 -com A ia riety Ril by ce cite) eh : 4 : i COL AP, f Za : : 4 6 rm ' ¢ ‘ oy , : ve. ' : . s 4 b Lor at Adee vit 8, ey OM fe) ge BVO Te bey * 7 ener P] ‘. 7 J y * De we te (a 5 4 #4 1. e. > c's 7 i. +i,