He felt his own dilating as she opened her throat and poured out
a broad, sonorous stream of sound that resolved into Von ewiger Liebe by
Brahms. He had always loved deep-voiced women. Had he not read in the
Talmud that Lilith, Adam's first wife, was low of voice? And this
beggar-maid? Maybe a masquerading singer with a crazy father! What else
could mean such art wasted on the roads, thrown in the faces of a
rabble! Ferval kindled with emotion. Here was romance. Brahms and his
dark song under the bowl of the troubled blue sky strongly affected him.
He took the lean, brown hand of the singer and kissed it fervently. She
drew back nervously, but her father struck her on the shoulder
chidingly.
"A trifle too dreary," he rumbled in his heavy bass. "Now, Purcell for
the gentleman, and may he open his heart and his purse for the poor."
"Father," she cried warningly, "we are not beggars, _now_!" She turned
supplicatingly to the young man and made a gesture of dismissal. He
gently shook his head and pretended that he was about to leave, though
he felt that his feet were rooted in the earth, his power of willing
gone.
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