Michael felt rather impatient at this; she was not anybody just now but a singer.

And then came the divine inevitable simplicity of perfect words and the melody preordained for them.

The singer, as he knew, was German, but she had no trace of foreign accent.

It seemed to him that this was just one miracle the more; she had become English because she was singing what Shakespeare wrote.
The next group, consisting of modern French songs, appeared to Michael utterly unworthy of the singer and the echoing piano.

If you had it in you to give reality to great and simple things, it was surely a waste to concern yourself with these little morbid, melancholy manikins, these marionettes.