‘Winnie,’ I said, ’it was no wonder you asked those questions, but you will soon know all.’

Whilst Winnie had been talking my mind had been partly occupied with words that fell from her about the voice of her mysterious rescuer.  They seemed to recall something.

’You were saying, Winnie, that the gentleman had a peculiarly musical voice,’ I said.

‘So musical,’ she replied, ’that it seemed to delight and charm, not my mind only, but every nerve in my body.’

‘Could you describe it?’

‘Describe a voice,’ she said, laughing.  ‘Who could describe a voice?’

‘You, Winnie; only you.  Do describe it.’

‘I wonder,’ she said, ’whether you remember our first walk along the Raxton road, when I made invidious comparison between the voices of birds and the voices of men and women?’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said.  ’I remember how you suggested that among the birds the rooks only could listen without offence to the cackle of a crowd of people.’

’Well, Henry, I can only give you an idea of the gentleman’s voice by saying that the most fastidious blackbirds and thrushes that ever lived would have liked it.  Indeed they did seem to like it, as I afterwards thought, when I took walks with him.  It was music in every variety of tone; and, besides, it seemed to me that this music was enriched by a tone which I had learnt from your own dear voice as a child, the tone which sorrow can give and nothing else.  The listener while he was speaking felt so drawn towards him as to love the man who spoke.  When his voice ceased, some part of his attraction ceased.  But the moment the voice was again heard the magic of the man returned as strong as ever.’

III

For some time during Winnie’s narrative glimmerings of the gentleman’s identity had been coming to me, and what she said of the voice seemed to be turning these glimmerings into shafts of light.  I was now in a state of the greatest impatience to verify my surmise.  But this only gave a sharper edge to my intense curiosity as to how she had been rescued by him.

‘Winnie,’ I said, ’you have said nothing about his appearance.  Could you describe his face?’

‘Describe his face?’ said Winnie.  ’If I were a painter I could paint it from memory.  But who can paint a face in words?’

Then she launched into a description of the gentleman’s appearance, and gave me a specimen of that ‘objective’ power which used to amaze me as a child but which I afterwards found was a speciality of the girls of Wales.

‘I should like a description of him feature by feature,’ I said.