The Lure of the Mask

Out of the unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted insong, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a nightbird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille deMadame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York.

Hillard, genuinelyastonished, lowered his pipe and listened.

To sit dreaming by an open window, even in thisunlovely first month of the year, in that grim unhandsome city which boasts of its richesand still accepts with smug content its rows upon rows of ugly architecture, to sitdreaming, then, of red-tiled roofs, of cloud-caressed hills, of terraced vineyards, ofcypresses in their dark aloofness, is not out of the natural order of things; but that into thisidle and pleasant dream there should enter so divine a voice, living, feeling, pulsing, thiswas not ordinary at all.