Читать книгу A Twentieth Century Idealist онлайн

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“How angelic!” whispered those who heard her.

“She is an angel,” said her mother, who knew her best.

The Doctor mused; he was still thinking some time after the song ceased. There was to him a feeling of both exhaustion and exaltation,—the human and the divine in his own personality.

As to Paul,—the emotion was rather strong for him, rather too much just then, the complications of feeling decidedly confusing, especially as he would be called upon to sing next. He felt perfectly limp. “What on earth can I do, after an angel has carried the whole crowd into the upper regions!”

The suppressed applause which followed Adele’s sacred song had hardly ceased, the hum of appreciation still heard, and Adele herself about to ask Henri Semple for the bouquet of American Beauties which he held for her, when she caught the eye of Paul and gave him a slight inclination of the head to approach.

Paul had been asked to sing next. She knew it,—she also knew the style of his music, that it could not possibly sound to advantage immediately after her own success. She also knew Paul’s sensibility, yet desire to oblige. In the kindness of her heart, now so sensitive from the holy spirit in music which had prompted her singing, she wished in some way to aid Paul to bridge over the dilemma into which her mother’s lack of appreciation of the personal element in music threatened to lead him, for it was Mrs. Cultus who had insisted upon his singing as soon as Adele finished.