"Please hand me the music," said Belle-bouche; "there in the scarlet binding."
Jacques started and obeyed. As she received it, the young girl's hand touched his own, and he uttered a sigh which might have melted rocks. The reason was, that Jacques was in love: we state the fact, though it has probably appeared before.
Belle-bouche's voice was like liquid moonlight and melodious flowers. Its melting involutions and expiring cadences unwound themselves and floated from her lips like satin ribbon gradually drawn out.
As for Jacques, he was in a dream; one might have supposed that his nerves were steeped in the liquid melody—or at times, when he started, that the music came over him like a shower bath of perfume.
His sighs would have conciliated tigers; and when she turned and smiled on him, he almost staggered.
"Now," said Belle-bouche smiling softly, "suppose I sing something a little merrier. You know the minuet always gives place to the reel."
Jacques uttered an expiring assent, and Belle-bouche commenced singing with her laughing voice the then popular ditty, "Pretty Betty Martin, tip-toe fine."
If her voice sighed before, it laughed out loudly now. The joyous and exhilarating music sparkled, glittered, fell in rosy showers—rattled like liquid diamonds and dry rain. It flashed, and glanced, and ran—and stumbling over itself, fell upwards, showering back again in shattered cadences and fiery foam.
When she ended, Jacques remained silent, and was only waked, so to speak, by hearing his name pronounced.
"Yes," he said at random.