The Argosy — page 391: what you’re looking at

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

Lost Harmony. 377 to deaden the sound of every note, I was still powerless to stir. Held by an irresistible impulse, I waited beside him, while the music, to my jealous fancy, surged in between us like a mighty barrier. And yet— and yet—it was so beautiful a thing to part us ! “ I—TI hate it.” So I answered, passionately, to his quiet question when he rose, and still in the Sunday hush around us lingered those mighty harmonies linked to the words divine. | “Ttis impossible, Phyllis,” he said, quite gently, and with that light upon his face which held him so far from me in my petty aims and jealousy. ‘You mean you do not care for it.” “I mean I Aave it,” I cried, in greater passion. ‘ How can I help hating it when you carefor nothing else? Must we all worship your idol?” ‘‘Not as I do, perhaps,” he said, most earnestly. “But no heart capable of love could Aaée that heavenly gift.” “Vo heart capable of love.” I repeated the words more than once, in a dazed sort of way, looking up into his face the while to search for that look which I could never find. And as I looked, the room swam round me, and the light all glided away from it. I can just remember stretching out both my burning hands for help, and—nothing more. ‘Tt was excitement and fatigue,” Aunt Anna said, sitting beside my bed when I opened my eyes at last ; but I knew differently. Of course I hated Heinrich’s music ; I always had hated it. Had I not satd so again and again? Amd was it not while I listened to it to-night, against my will, that there had rushed into my heart that last undying conviction that ¢4és was his life and love, and that what was his life and love was agony to me? Had not this truth, wrapped in the subtle, magic power of his own music, touched me with a pain like death? But surely in that one touch of agony it had passed. Never again would I make even one feeble effort to win the love he lavished on his art. I would turn to my lowly life and live it earnestly -—but apart from his. And perhaps in years to come, when tidings reached me of the height to which his art had led him, I should be able to rejoice without those old sore pangs of jealousy and ambition. And he should never know “Phyllis,” Aunt Anna whispered, bending over me, “can you hear me? Do you see me? Look into my eyes, dear.” I fancied that she was speaking a long way off, farther even than my strained gaze could reach, though my eyes went searching among the dusky leaves, even beyond the small white clouds which fell and faded as I looked. No; I could notsee her. She, too, had gone from me. With a cry, I raised my groping hands to feel, and then again the light all glided from my room. COLMA a) NOOKS (CO)