that forbade criticism in this solemn little creature; and every one
applauded, for every one felt that her singing had been admirable. But
there was no warmth of admiration, no complete satisfaction: she had
sung with wonderful delicacy and taste and feeling; her performance had
been exquisitely finished, perfect; but something familiar, something
essential had been missing. She had left out Cherubino: she had
completely forgotten and passed over the page.

How was it? How could it be that the something which we felt was the
nature of the page, the something which even the coarsest, poorest
performers had brought out in this piece, had completely disappeared in
this wonderfully perfect rendering by this subtle little singer? Perhaps
the rendering had been only materially perfect: perhaps it was merely
the exquisite tone of the voice, the wonderful neatness of execution
which had given it an appearance of completeness; perhaps the real
meaning of the music had escaped her; perhaps there was behind all this
perfection of execution only a stolid dulness of nature, to which the
genius of Mozart was not perceptible. None of all these possibilities
and probabilities: the chief characteristic of the performance was
exactly the sense of perfect musical intuition, of subtle appreciation
of every little intonation, the sense that this docile and exquisite
physical instrument was being played upon by a keen and unflinching
artistic intelligence. The more you thought over it, the more you
compared this performance with any other performance of the piece, the
more also did you feel convinced that this was the right, the only right
reading of the piece; that this strange, serious little dark creature
had given you the whole, the perfection of Mozart's conception; no,
there could be no doubt of it, this and this alone was Mozart's idea of
"Voi che sapete." Mozart's idea? the whole of Mozart's conception?
here, in this delicate, dignified, idyllic performance? The whole? Why
then, where, if this was the whole of Mozart's conception, where was
Cherubino, where was the page? Why, nowhere. Now that the song had been
presented to us in its untampered perfection, that the thought of
the composer was clear to us--now that we could begin to analyse the
difference between this performance and the performances of other
singers--we began to see, vaguely at first and not without doubts of our
powers of sight, but to see, and more and more disti