Now she was a girl again, and back at the old home.

Those were the southern mountains half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days, swinging up again.

There was the gallery at the window of the old Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, the unspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more! The souls of a thousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came to her out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.
And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all, to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--she sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat crumpled up, shaken, undone.
She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she could not deprive herself of her own little triumph.

Or perhaps, deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear.

She sang first the leading _arias_ of her more prominent operatic roles.
She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance on a critical stage.