Evelyn's voice filled with the beauty of the melody, and she sang the
phrase which closes the stanza--a phrase which dances like a puff of
wind in an evening bough--so tenderly, so lovingly, that acute tears
trembled under the eyelids. And all her soul was in her voice when
she sang the phrase of passionate faith which the lonely,
disheartened woman sings, looking up from the desert rock. Then her
voice sank into the calm beauty of the "Ave Maria," now given with
confidence in the Virgin's intercession, and the broken chords passed
down the keyboard, uniting with the last note of the solemn octaves,
which had sounded through the song like bells heard across an evening
landscape.
"How beautifully she sings it!" a man said out loud, and his
neighbour looked and wondered, for the man's eyes were full of tears.
"You have a beautiful voice, child," said the Prioress when they came
out of church, "and it is a real pleasure to me to hear you sing, and
it will be a greater pleasure when I know that for the future your
great gift will be devoted to the service of God. Shall we go into
the garden for a little walk before supper? We shall have it to
ourselves, and the air will do you good.
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