ischievously
conscious that they make him a personage for all this womankind. Every
one has heard "Voi che sapete" sung a hundred times by dozens of singers
in dozens of fashions, till it has become in the recollection a sort of
typical jumble of all these various readings; but we once chanced to
hear a reading of "Voi che sapete" which has remained strangely distinct
and separate in our remembrance; which made that performance of the
hackneyed piece remain isolated in our mind, almost as if the air
had never before or never since been heard by us. The scene of the
performance has remained in our memory as a whole, because the look,
the attitude, the face of the performer seemed to form a whole, a unity
of expression and character, with the inflexions of the voice and the
accentuation of the words. She was standing by the piano: a Spanish
Creole, but, instead of the precocious, overblown magnificence of
tropical natures, with a something almost childlike despite seriousness,
something inflexible, unexpanded, unripe about her; quite small,
slender, infinitely slight and delicate; standing perfectly straight
and motionless in her long, tight dress of ashy rose colour; her little
dark head with its tight coils of ebony hair perfectly erect; her great
dark violet-circled eyes, with their perfect ellipse of curved eyebrow
meeting curved eyelash, black and clear against the pale, ivory-tinted
cheek, looking straight before her; self-unconscious, concentrated,
earnest, dignified, with only a faint fluttering smile, to herself, not
to the audience, about the mouth. She sang the page's song in a strange
voice, sweet and crisp, like a Cremonese violin, with a bloom of youth,
scarcely mature yet perfect, like the honey dust of the vine-flower;
sang the piece with an unruffled serenity, with passion, no limpness or
languor, but passion restrained, or rather undeveloped; with at most a
scarcely perceptible hesitation and reticence of accent, as of budding
youthful emotion; her voice seeming in some unaccountable manner to move
in a higher, subtler stratum of atmosphere, as it dextrously marked,
rounded off, kissed away each delicate little phrase. When she had done,
she gave a slight bow with her proud little head, half modestly and half
contemptuously, as, with her rapid, quiet movement, she resumed her
seat; she probably felt that despite the applause, her performance
did not really please. No one criticised, for there was something