“Dada warbled like a lark, and Agne--well you know how it always is. Her voice sounded lovely but it was just as usual. You can guess how much there is in her and how deep her feeling is but she never quite brings it out. What has she to complain of with us? And yet whatever she sings has that mournful, painful ring which even you can do nothing to alter. However, she pleased them better than Dada did, for I noticed that Gorgo and the gentleman glanced at each other and at her, and whispered a word now and then which certainly referred to Ague. When they had sung two songs the young lady came towards us and praised both the girls, and asked whether we would undertake to learn something quite new. I told her that my father was a great musician who could master the most difficult things at the first hearing.” “The most difficult! Hm... that depends,” said the old man. “Did she show it you?” “No; it is something in the style of Linus and she sang it to us.” “The daughter of the rich Porphyrius sang for your entertainment? Yours?” said Karnis laughing. “By Sirius! The world is turning upside down. Now that girls are forbidden to perform to the gentlefolks, art is being cultivated by the upper classes; it cannot be killed outright. For the future the listeners will be paid to keep quiet and the singers pay for the right of torturing their ears--our ears, our luckless ears will be victimized.” Orpheus smiled and shook his head; then, again dropping his knife, he went on eagerly: “But if you could only hear her! You would give your last copper piece to hear her again.” “Indeed!” muttered his father. “Well, there are very good teachers here. Something by Linus did you say she sang?” “Something of that kind; a lament for the dead of very great power: ‘Return, oh! return my beloved, came back--come home!’ that was the burthen of it. And there was a passage which said: ‘Oh that each tear had a voice and could join with me in calling thee!’ And how she sang it, father! I do not think I ever in my life heard anything like it. Ask mother. Even Dada’s eyes were full of tears.” “Yes, it was beautiful,” the mother agreed. “I could not help wishing that you were there.” Karnis rose and paced the little room, waving his arms and muttering: “Ah! so that is how it is! A friend of the Muses. We saved the large lute--that is well. My chlamys has an ugly hole in it--if the girls were not asleep... but the first thing to-morrow Ague.... Tell me, is she handsome, tall?” Herse had been watching her excitable husband with much satisfaction and now answered his question: “Not a Hera--not a Muse--decidedly not. Hardly above the middle height, slightly made, but not small, black eyes, long lashes, dark straight eyebrows. I could hardly, like Orpheus, call her beautiful...”