The Atlantic Monthly, page 39 by Various Authors
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coming! how strangely long! rare worldliness! almost it seemed that now she would wait no longer, for the gold must be given away.
"Why do you sing, Sybella?" asked Miss Edgar, as they went.
"Why did I stop singing?" asked the young lady in turn; this stiff, shy, proud creature, what flame might one soon see flaring out of those blue eyes!
"I knew there had been a break,--that there must have been."
"For two years I did nothing but wait in silence."
"What,--for the voice to come back? overwork? paying a penalty?"
"No,--not the penalty of overwork, at least. I lost everything in a moment. That was penalty, perhaps, for having risked everything. I have only recently been getting back a little: no, getting back nothing,--but some new life, out of a new world, I think. A different world from what I ever thought to inhabit. New to me as the earth was to Noah after the Flood. He couldn't turn a spade but he laid open graves, nor pull a flower but it broke his heart. I should never have been in the church-choir but for you. Of that I am satisfied. When you came and asked me, you saw, perhaps, that I was excited more than so slight a matter warranted. It was, indeed, a simple enough request. Not surprising that you should discover, one way or another, I could sing. And there was need enough of a singer with such an organist. But you never could guess what I went through after I had promised, till the Sunday came. You remember how astonished you were when I came into the choir. I was afraid you were going to excuse me from my part. But you at least understood something of it; you did not even ask if I were not ill. It seems a long time since then."
A little to the organist's surprise, it was into a broad and handsome street that Sybella now led the way, and before the door of a very handsome house she stopped.
"Will you not come in and discover where I live, and how? It will be too late in a moment for you to go back alone. I shall find some