Listen!" And, playing a dreamy, murmuring prelude like the sound of a brook flowing through a hollow cavern, he sang Swinburne's "Leave-Taking," surely one of the saddest and most beautiful poems in the English language.
He subdued his voice to suit the melancholy hopelessness of the lines, and rendered it with so much intensity of pathetic expression that it was difficult to keep tears from filling the eyes.

When he came to the last verse, the anguish of a wasted life seemed to declare itself in the complete despair of his low vibrating tones: "Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof, Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep; And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love!" The deep melancholy of the music and the quivering pathos of the deep baritone voice were so affecting that it was almost a relief when the song ceased.

I had been looking out of the window at the fantastic patterns of the moonlight on the garden walk, but now I turned to see in Zara's face her appreciation of what we had just heard.

To my surprise she had left the room.

Heliobas reclined in his easy-chair, glancing up and down the columns of the Figaro; and the Prince still sat at the piano, moving his fingers idly up and down the keys without playing.