It changed; it grew unearthly, spiritualised, such music as those might use who welcome souls to their long home.

Lastly, it became rich and soft and far as the echo of a dream, and through it could be heard sighs and the broken words of love, that slowly fell away and melted as into the nothingness of some happy sleep.
The singer was weary; her fingers could no longer guide the bow; her voice grew faint.

For a moment, she stood still, looking in the flicker of the fire and the pale beams of the stars like some searcher returned from heaven to earth.

Then, half fainting, down she sank upon a chair.
Morris turned on the lamps, and looked at this fair being, this chosen home of Music, who lay before him like a broken lily.

Then back into his heart with a chilling shock came the thought that this woman, to him at least the most beautiful and gifted his eyes had seen, had promised herself in marriage to Stephen Layard; that she, her body, her mind, her music--all that made her the Stella Fregelius whom he knew--were the actual property of Stephen Layard.