My instructions came from a woman."
"A woman!"
"Yes, and one who is evidently interested in your affairs," Fairley
answered. "Does your memory not serve to remind you of such a woman?"
Crosby did not answer the question. In the darkness of the road before
him he seemed to see a vision.
"What is this woman like?" He did not turn to look at his companion as
he asked the question; he hardly seemed to know that he had spoken.
"I cannot tell you; there are no words," said Fairley, in that curious
monotone which the recital of verse may give, or which constant singing
may leave in a minstrel's ordinary speech. "I cannot tell, but my fiddle
might play her to you in a rhapsody that should set the music in your
soul vibrating. There are women whose image cunning fingers may catch
with brush and pigment and limn it on canvas; there are women whose
image may be traced in burning words so that a vision of her rises
before the reader or the hearer; and there are women whose beauty can
only be told in music--the subtle music that lies in vibrating strings,
music into which a man can pour his whole soul and so make the world
understand.
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