CHAPTER IV
I felt like one mesmerised, and this condition was repeated every time he called at the house. When I received him, I was perfectly indifferent, even in conversation. I felt towards him as a mere acquaintance, but when he began to sing my whole nature changed. It was ever the same song, and that song was the enchantress. I resolved not to ask him to sing again, but when the time came I could not resist. The strange fascination of the song lay in its power to bring back to my memory the days of my childhood. It poured a flood of feeling over me that awoke the dormant emotions of the maiden, and ere the song was ended, it created a vortex in which I felt myself carried into the realm of the ideal, searching for something I knew and yet I knew not. I was lost in an intense longing; it seemed as if a god had taken possession of him who sang. Anon as I listened to the melody it broke the barriers of time until
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