Intoxication ... a permanent intoxication in and out amongst life, all the time with an increasing store of good ideas about things; in time, about everything. A slight intoxication began it, making it possible to look at things from a distance, in separate wholes and make discoveries about them. It was being somewhere else, and suddenly looking up, out of completion, at distant things, that brought their meanings and the right words. “But you must at once finish. They are closing. It is now midnight.” It did not matter. Nothing was at an end. Nothing would ever come to an end again...... She passed, talking emphatically, out into the wide dimly-lit sky-filled east-end street, and walked unconscious of fatigue, carrying Mr. Shatov along at his swiftest plunge, mile after mile, in a straight line westward along the opening avenue of her new permanent freedom from occasions. From detail to detail, snatched swiftly by the slenderest thread of coherence, she passed in easy emphatic talk, covering the bright endless prospect of her contemplation, her voice alive, thrilling with joyful gratitude, quivering now and again as it moved, possessed and controlled by the first faint dawning apprehension of some universal password, from one bright tumultuously branching thing to another, with a gratitude that poured itself out within her in a rain of tears. Mr. Shatov followed her swift migrations with solid responsive animation; he seemed for the first time to find no single thing to object to or correct; even restatement was absent, and presently he began to sing...... “It is a Russian song with words of Poushkin and music of Rubinstein. Ah but it requires Chaliapin. A most profound bass. There is nothing in singing so profoundly moving as pure basso; you should hear him. He stands _alone_ in Europe.” The thronging golden multitudes moved to the tones of this great Russian voice, the deepest in the world, singing out across Europe from beyond Germany. With faltering steps, just begun, whilst now and for ever she passionately brooded on distant things, she was one of this elect shining army..... “wandering amongst the mountains, the highest notes if they leap up pure and free, in soprano, touch the sky.” “That is true. But in concerts, the strength and most profound moving quality come from the bass. Ah you should hear a Russian male choir. There is not in Europe such strength and flexibility and most particularly such marvel of unanimity, making one single movement of phrase in all these many voices together. There is singing in the great Russian churches, all colourful and with a splendour of ornate decoration, singing that the most infidel could not hear unmoved.” The Russian _voice_ was melancholy poetry in itself; somewhere within the shapely rough strength of the words, was a pleading tender melancholy.