all of a sudden the whole place awoke to the noise of a piercing cry
which but for its exquisite tone might have been the cry of pain, so
shrill was it and so coercing to the ear. It was maintained, and before
it fell was followed by a succession of those quarter-tones which only
the Arabs have, and which I had thought finally banished from Europe. To
this inhuman and appalling song were set loud open vowels rather than
words.

Of the Two Men, one leapt at once from his bed crying out, "This is the
music! This is what I have desired to hear!" For this is what he had
once been told could be heard in the desert, when first he looked out
over the sand from Atlas: but though he had travelled far, he had never
heard it, and now he heard it here, in the very root of these European
hills. It was on this account that he cried out, "This is the music!"
And when he had said this he put on a great rough cloak and ran to the
room from which the song or cry proceeded, and after him ran his
companion.

The Two Men stood at the door behind a great mass of muleteers, who all
craned forward to where, upon a dais at the end of the room, sat a
Jewess who still continued for some five minutes this intense and
terrible effort of the voice. Beside her a man who was not of her race
urged her on as one urges an animal to further effort, crying out, "Hap!
Hap!" and beating his palms together rhythmically and driving and
goading her to the full limit of her power.

The sound ceased suddenly as though it had been stabbed and killed, and
the woman whose eyes had been strained and lifted throughout as in a
trance, and whose body had been rigid and quivering, sank down upon
herself and let her eyelids fall, and her head bent forward.