That was the atmosphere of this prelude, excessive, unutterable, crude, sombre vulgarity of a detached and remote kind. As Levillier listened to it amazed, he found that he did not instinctively connect the vulgarity with any human traits, or translate the notes into acts within his experience. He was simply conscious of being brought to the verge of some sphere in which the sordidness attained by our race would be sneered at as delicacy, in which our lowest grovellings of the pigsty would be as lofty flights through the skies. And the hideous eccentricity of the music, its wanton desolation, deepened until both Levillier and Julian were pale under its spell, shrank from its ardent, its merciless and lambent sarcasm against all things refined or beautiful. The prelude was as fire and sword, as plague and famine, as plunder and war, as all instruments that lay waste and that wound, a destroying angel before whose breath the first-born withered and the very sun shrivelled into a heap of grey ashes. As Doctor Levillier leaned forward, moved by an irresistible impulse, and stretched out his hand to enforce silence from this blare of deplorable melody, Valentine looked up at him, into his eyes, and began to sing. The doctor's movement was arrested, his hand dropped to his side, he remained tense, frigid, his eyes fastened on Valentine's like a man mesmerised. At first he knew that he was wondering whether his brain was playing him a trick, whether his sense of hearing had, by some means, become impaired, so that he heard a voice, not dimly, as is the case with the partially deaf, but wrongly, as may be the case with the mad, or with those who have suffered under a blow or through an injury to the brain. For this voice was not Valentine's at all, but the voice of a stranger, powerful, harsh, and malignant. It rang through the room noisily. A thick hoarseness dressed it as in disease, and at moments broke it and crushed it down. Then it would emerge as in a sigh or wail, pushing its way up with all the mechanical power of the voice of a wild animal, and mounting to a desperate climax, sinister and alarming. So unlike ordinary singing was the performance of this voice that, after the first paralysis of surprise and disgust had passed away from the doctor and Julian, they both felt the immediate necessity of putting a period to this deadly song, to which no words gave the faintest touch of humanity. They knew that it must attract and rivet the attention of others in the mansions, even possibly of passers-by in the street. The doctor withdrew his gaze from Valentine's at length, and turned hastily to Julian, whom he found regarding him with a glance almost of horror. "Stop him," Julian murmured. "You!" answered Levillier.