When they entered the hall which had so moved Richard's admiration the first time he saw it, he stood for a moment lost in thought. When he came to himself, Barbara had left him; but ere he had time to wonder, such a burst of organ music filled the place as might have welcomed one that had overcome the world. He stood entranced for a minute, then hastened to the gallery, where he found Barbara at the instrument.
“What!” he cried in astonishment; “you, Barbara! you play like that!”
“I wanted to be worth something to you, Richard.”
“Oh Barbara, you are a queen at giving! I was well named, for you were coming! I am Richard indeed!—oh, so rich!”
In the evening they went out into the park. The moon was rising. The sunlight was not quite gone. Her light mingled with the light that gave it her. “Do you know that lovely passage in the Book of Baruch?” asked Richard.
“What book is that?” returned Barbara. “It can't be in the Bible, surely?”
“It is in the Apocrypha—which is to me very much in the Bible! I think I can repeat it. I haven't a good memory, but some things stick fast.”
But in the process of recalling it, Richard's thoughts wandered, and Baruch was forgotten.
“This dying of Apollo in the arms of Luna,” he said, “this melting of the radiant god into his own pale shadow, always reminds me of the poverty-stricken, wasted and sad, yet lovely Elysium of the pagans: so little consolation did they gather from the thought of it, that they longed to lay their bodies, not in the deep, cool, far-off shadow of grove or cave, but by the ringing roadside, where live feet, in two meeting, mingling, parting tides, ever came and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch or enchanter; and—”
“Where are you going, Richard? Please take me with you. I feel as if I were lost in a wood!”