Harold Macgrath

The Lure of the Mask Harold Macgrath

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. And Hillard was glad that the room was in darkness. He rose eagerly and peered out. But hesaw no one. Across the street the arc-lamp burned dimly, like an opal in the matrix, while ofarchitectural outlines not one remained, the fog having kindly obliterated them. The Voice rose and sank and soared again, drawing nearer and nearer. It was joyous andunrestrained, and there was youth in it, the touch of spring and the breath of flowers. Themusic was Lecocq's, that is to say, French; but the tongue was of a country which Hillardknew to be the garden of the world. Presently he observed a shadow emerge from theyellow mist, to come within the circle of light, which, faint as it was, limned in against thenothingness beyond the form of a woman. She walked directly under his window.