But the moment my voice, though I sang low and soft, stirred the air of the hall, the dancers started; the quick interweaving crowd shook, lost its form, divided; each figure sprang to its pedestal, and stood, a self-evolving life no more, but a rigid, life-like, marble shape, with the whole form composed into the expression of a single state or act.

Silence rolled like a spiritual thunder through the grand space.

My song had ceased, scared at its own influences.

But I saw in the hand of one of the statues close by me, a harp whose chords yet quivered.

I remembered that as she bounded past me, her harp had brushed against my arm; so the spell of the marble had not infolded it.