"It is never safe to count on his silence," Herman said. "He has probably been meditating some stinging epigram against woman. We shall have something wild directly."
"No; I've nothing to say against women now," Arthur returned, rising, "for I want Mrs. Greyson to sing. I wish you'd stop poisoning the air with those confounded cigarettes, Fred. The use of cigarettes degrades smoking to the level of the small vices, and I object to it on principle."
He opened the piano as he spoke, and without demur Helen allowed him to lead her to the instrument.
"If you do not mind," she said a little diffidently, turning to her guests after she had seated herself, "I should like to have the gas lowered a trifle. It may seem a little sentimental, but I do not like to be looked at too keenly when I sing."
The flames of the gas jets were dimmed, and Helen struck a few soft chords. Herman listened intently. He had heard Fenton praise Mrs. Greyson's singing, but he was entirely unprepared for what was to come, and he never forgot the thrill of that experience.
An unpretending, flowing prelude; then suddenly the tones of the singer.
Helen's voice was a rich, fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song which opens Shelley's Hellas:
I strew these opiate flowers
On thy restless pillow,—
They were plucked from Orient bowers,
By the Indian billow.
Be thy sleep
Calm and deep,
Like theirs who fell; not ours who weep.
Away, unlovely dreams!
Away, false shapes of sleep!
Be his, as Heaven seems,
Clear and bright and deep!
Soft as love and calm as death,
Sweet as summer night without a breath.