I had
made a discovery, and that all was vanity. Well, we thanked the singer
gravely enough, and went on, smiling and grimacing, to talk local
gossip. A few minutes later, a young girl, very shy and painfully
ingenuous, was hauled protesting to the piano. I could see her hands
tremble as she arranged her music, and the first chords she struck were
halting and timid. Then she began to sing--it was some simple
old-fashioned song--what had happened? the world was somehow different;
she had one of those low thrilling voices, charged with utterly
inexplicable emotion, haunted with old mysterious echoes out of some
region of dreams, so near and yet so far away. I do not think that the
girl had any great intensity of mind, or even of soul, neither was she
a great performer; but there was some strange and beautiful quality
about the voice, that now rose clear and sustained, while the
accompaniment charged and tinged the pure notes with glad or mournful
visions, like wine poured into water; now the voice fell and lingered,
like a clear stream among rocks, pathetic, appealing, stirring a deep
hunger of the spirit, and at the same time hinting at a hope, at a
secret almost within one's grasp. How can one find words to express a
thing so magical, so inexpressible? But it left me feeling as though to
sing thus was the one thing worth doing in the world, because it seemed
to interpret, to reveal, to sustain, to console--it was as though one
opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and saw through it a deep and
silent glen, with woodlands stooping to a glimmering stream, with a
blue stretch of plain beyond, and an expanse of sunny seas on the rim
of the sky.

I have had similar experiences before. I have looked in a gallery at
picture after picture--bright, soulless, accomplished things--and asked
myself how it was possible for men and women to spend their time so
elaborately to no purpose; and then one catches sight of some little
sketch--a pool in the silence of high summer, the hot sun blazing on
tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants, with a single figure in
a moored boat, musing dreamily; and at once one is transported into a
region of thrilled wonder. What is it all about? What is this sudden
glimpse into a life so rich and strange? In what quiet country is it
all enacted, what land of sweet visions? What do the tall trees and the
sleeping pool hide from me, and in what romantic region of joy and
sadness does the dreamer