"Guy, for heaven's sake, what's that?"
The singer cut into his song long enough to call back over his shoulder:
"Schumann! 'To the Beloved'!"
He began singing again, his head thrown back, his big body swaying. All the longing for love of a fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him made shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyousness.
Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of the universe there was such expression for his nameless ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he heard, nor the piano; it was the morning stars singing together; it was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the larks and all the thrushes and all the nightingales that in all the ages had ever trilled to the sun and moon.
"Don't stop," he shouted, when the song had mounted to its close. "Let's have it all over again."
So they had it all over again, the one in his wordless, mumbled tenor, and the other singing in his heart.
XL