the world:
Who flame at the breath
Of the Mockers of Death.
O Sweet, we will voyage again
To the camp of Love's fire,
Nevermore to return!"

"How am I doing?" she said at the end of this verse. She really did
not know--her voice seemed an endless distance away. But she felt the
stillness in the drawing-room.

"Well," he said. "Now for the other. Don't be afraid; let your voice,
let yourself, go."

"I can't let myself go."

"Yes, you can: just swim with the music."

She did swim with it. Never before had Peppingham drawing-room heard a
song like this; never before, never after, did any of Delia Gasgoyne's
friends hear her sing as she did that night. And Lady Gravesend
whispered for a week afterwards that Delia Gasgoyne sang a wild love
song in the most abandoned way with that colonial Belward. Really a song
of the most violent sentiment!

There had been witchery in it all. For Gaston lifted the girl on the
waves of his music, and did what he pleased with her, as she sang:

"O love, by the light of thine eye
We will fare oversea,
We will be
As the silver-winged herons that rest
By the shallows,
The shallows of sapphire stone;
No more shall we wander alone.
As the foam to the shore
Is my spirit to thine;
And God's serfs as they fly,--
The Mockers of Death
They will breathe on the embers of fire:
We shall live by that breath,--
Sweet, thy heart to my heart,
As we journey afar,
No more, nevermore, to return!"

When the song was ended there was silence, then an eager murmur, and
requests for more; but Gaston, still lengthening the close of the
accompaniment, said quietly:

"No more. I wanted to hear you sing that song only."

He rose.

"I am so very hot," she said.

"Come into the hall."

They passed into the long corridor, and walked up and down, for a time
in silence.

"You felt that music?" he asked at last.

"As I never felt music before," she replied.

"Do you know why I asked you to sing it?"

"How should I know?"

"To see how far you could go with it."

"How far did I go?"

"As far as I expected."

"It was satisfactory?"

"Perfectly."

"But why--experiment--on me?"

"That I might see if you were not, after all, as much a barbarian as I."

"Am I?"

"No. That was myself singing as well as you. You