the transformation. "Would the good gentleman
please--?"

The girl plucked at her father's arm imploringly. With her grave, cold
expression she answered the other's salutation and fixed him with her
wonderful eyes so inquiringly that Ferval began a hasty explanation.
"English was rarely spoken here ... and then the pleasure of the music!"
The old man burst into scornful laughter.

"The music!" he exclaimed. "The music!" echoed his daughter. Ferval
wished himself down in Rouen. But he held his position.

"Yes," he continued, "your music. It interested me. And now I find you
speaking my own tongue. I must confess that I am curious, that my
curiosity has warrant." Thus was he talking to beggars as if they were
his social equals. Unconsciously the tone he adopted had been forced
upon him by the bearing of his companions, above all by their accent,
that of cultivated folk. Who and what were they? The musician no longer
smiled.

"You are a music-lover, monsieur?" he asked in a marked French _patois_.

"I love music, and I am extremely engaged by your remarkable combination
of instruments," answered Ferval. Baki regarded his wretched orchestra
on the grass, then spoke to his daughter.

"Debora," he said in English, and his listener wondered if it were
Celtic or Scotch in its unusual intonations, "Debora, you must sing
something for the gentleman. He loves our art,"--there was indescribable
pathos in this phrase,--"so sing something from Purcell, Brahms, or
Richard Strauss."

These words were like the sting of hail; they seemed to drop from the
sky, so out of key were they with the speaker's ragged clothes and the
outlandish garb of his daughter. Purcell! Brahms! Strauss! What could
these three composers mean to such outcasts? Believing that he was the
victim of a mystification, Ferval waited, his pulses beating as if he
had been running too hard. The girl slowly moved her glorious eyes in
his direction; light as they were in hue, their heavy, dark lashes gave
them a fantastic expression--bright flame seen through the shadow of
smoke. He felt his own dilating as she opened her throat and poured out
a broad, sonorous stream of sound that resolved into Von ewiger Liebe by
Brahms. He had always loved deep-voiced women. Had he not read in the
Talmud that Lilith, Adam's first wife, was low of voice? And this
beggar-maid? Maybe a masquerading singer with a crazy father! What else
could mean such art wasted on the roads, thro