The frown vanished and a smile of heavenly rapture took its place. His
mouth gradually opened till its resemblance to the penultimate vowel was
quite realistic, and simultaneously, by a curious muscular
co-ordination, he rose on his toes to a considerable height in the air.

The strain was terrible--like waiting for a gun to go off. James was
conscious of a strange vibration by his side, and saw that Jos Swetnam
had got the whole of a lace handkerchief into her mouth.

The gun went off--not with a loud report, but with a gentle and lofty
tenor piping, somewhere in the neighbourhood of F, or it might have been
only E (though, indeed, a photograph would have suggested that Emanuel
was singing at lowest the upper C), and the performer slowly resumed his
normal stature.

"O Love!" he had exclaimed, adagio and sostenuto.

Then the piano, in its fashion, also said: "O Love!"

"O Love!" Emanuel exclaimed again, with slight traces of excitement, and
rising to heights of stature hitherto undreamt of.

And the piano once more, in turn, called plaintively on love.

It would be too easy to mock Emanuel's gift of song. I leave that to
people named Swetnam. There can be no doubt Emanuel had a very taking
voice, if thin, and that his singing gave pleasure to the majority of
his hearers. More than any one else, it pleased himself. When he sang he
seemed to be inspired by the fact, to him patent, that he was conferring
on mankind a boon inconceivably precious. If he looked a fool, his looks