Hot
tears blinded Jan's eyes and he covered his face with his hands, and
sobbed as he had sobbed years before, when in the southern wilderness
word came to him that Melisse was dying.
"Melisse--Melisse--" He moaned her name aloud, and stared through the
hot film in his eyes away into the north, sobbing to her, calling to
her in his grief, and looking through that thousand miles of starlit
space as though from out of it her sweet face would come to him once
more. And as he called there seemed to come to him from out of that
space a sound, so sweet, and low, and tender that his heart stood
still and he stood up straight and stretched his arms up to Heaven,
for Jan Thoreau knew that it was the sound of a violin that came to
him from out of the north--that Melisse, an infinity away, had heard
his call, his prayer, and was playing for him and Kazan!
And suddenly, as he listened, his arms fell to his sides, and there
shot into his eyes all of the concentrated light of the stars, for the
music came nearer and nearer, and still nearer to him, until he caught
Kazan in his arms and ran with him down the side of the mountain. It
died now in the forest--then rose again, softer and more distant it
seemed to him, luring him on into the forest gloom. For a few moments
consciousness of all else but that sound remained with him only in a
dazed, half real way, and as John Cummins had called upon the angels
at Lac Bain many years ago when he, too, had gone out into the night
to meet this wonderful music, so Jan Thoreau's soul cried to them now
as he clutched Kazan to him, and stumbled on.
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