The Argosy — page 222: what you’re looking at

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

The Tenant of The Cedars. 205 ence but for the feeling of languor and depression which clung to me. For the first time in my life I was conscious of ‘‘nerves.’’ [I felt restless and ill-at-ease, and my sleep was disturbed by troubled dreams from which I woke, ‘‘in the dead waste and middle of the night,”’ trembling with some nameless fear. | One night when I had started awake in this uncomfortable fashion, finding it impossible to compose myself to sleep again, I half dressed, lighted a cigar, and took my seat near the open window. ‘The night was sultry and still. The moon had set, but the sky was full of stars, and their faint, diffused light showed me the garden, the stream, and the shadowy park beyond. The murmur of running water, scarcely heard by day, was distinctly audible in the silence, and now and then a languid breeze charged with the sweet aromatic odour which the sleeping earth breathes forth, just stirred the leaves and died away. Was it in the magical stillness of such a night as this, I wondered, that Léonie Lestelle had sung her last song—that song which was never finished ? Her face rose up before me with strange distinctness, and I seemed to be listening once more to the clear, silvery sweet tones of her ex- quisite voice, which had a tender thrill, like the wooing note ofa dove. I recollected that when last I heard her sing—it was a private concert at Lady A—-—’s—she had chosen Beethoven’s ‘‘ Per pieta non dirmi addio!” ‘The words haunted me, their musical syllables setting themselves to the murmur of the breeze and the ripple of the stream. I do not know how long I had been sitting thus when I was roused from my reverie by another sound, coming from the room be- neath—the key of which had been in my own possession since the day of my arrival. It did not at once arrest my attention, but stole upon me so gradually that I could not have told at what moment I first heard it. I turned from the window and listened. Was I dreaming, I asked myself bewilderedly, or did I hear the faint sweet tones of a woman’s voice singing the very song which haunted my memory? I started to my feet, and for a moment stood transfixed, paralysed, by a fear such as I had never before experienced. Recovering myself by an effort I took up the night-lamp and left the room. I noiselessly descended the stairs, crossed the little tiled entrance- hall, and paused outside the door of the closed room. My heart beat fast and thick and a creeping chill stirred the roots of my hair as I stood in the hush of the sleeping house, listening—to what P | The voice of Léonie Lestelle. Faint and aerial as the notes of an folean harp ; near, yet distant ; sweet beyond words, but unutterably sad, it thrilled through the silence, breathing with tender, passionate entreaty: ‘“‘Ah, per piet’ non dirmi addio!” I forgot to feel afraid ; [ forgot even to wonder, as I listened with suspended breath to those CoOnniclooolks (C(O) mn