They were very earnest, and yet they sparkled and laughed to him companionably; and sometimes he had smiled back upon her.

The Undine danced before him through the lonely years, on fair nights in his walks, and came to sit by his fire on winter evenings when he stared alone at the embers.
And to-night, here in Plattville, he heard a voice he had waited for long, one that his fickle memory told him he had never heard before.
But, listening, he knew better--he had heard it long ago, though when and how, he did not know, as rich and true, and ineffably tender as now.
He threw a sop to his common sense.

"Miss Sherwood is a little thing" (the image was so surely tall) "with a bumpy forehead and spectacles," he said to himself, "or else a provincial young lady with big eyes to pose at you." Then he felt the ridiculousness of looking after his common sense on a moonlight night in June; also, he knew that he lied.
The song had ceased, but the musician lingered, and the keys were touched to plaintive harmonies new to him.

He had come to Plattville before "Cavalleria Rusticana" was sung at Rome, and now, entranced, he heard the "Intermezzo" for the first time.

Listening to this, he feared to move lest he should wake from a summer-night's dream.
A ragged little shadow flitted down the path behind him, and from a solitary apple-tree, standing like a lonely ghost in the middle of the field, came the _woo_ of a screech owl--twice.