After tea, they re-entered the house at Maryllia's request to hear Cicely play. Arrived in the drawing-room they found the only truly modern thing in it, a grand piano, of that noted French make which as far surpasses the German model as a genuine Stradivarius surpasses a child's fiddle put together yesterday, and, taking her seat at this instrument, Cicely had transformed both herself and it into unspeakable enchantment. The thing of wood and wire and ivory keys had become possessed, as it were, with the thunder of the battling clouds and the great rush of the sea,--and then it had suddenly whispered of the sweetness of love and life, till out of storm had grown the tender calm of a flowing melody, on which wordless dreams of happiness glittered like rainbow bubbles on foam, shining for a moment and then vanishing at a breath; it had caught the voices of the rain and wind,--and the pattering drops and sibilant hurricane had whizzed sharply through the scale of sound till the very notes seemed alive with the wrath of nature,--and then it had rolled all the wild clamour away into a sustained magnificence of prayerful chords which seemed to plead for all things grand, all things true, all things beautiful,--and to list the soul of man in panting, labouring ecstasy up to the very threshold of Heaven!

And she--the 'goblin' who evoked all this phantasmagoria of life set in harmony--she too changed as it seemed, in nature and aspect,--her small meagre face was as the face of a pictured angel, with the dark hair clustering round it in thick knots and curling waves as of blackest bronze,--while the eyes, full of soft passion and fire, glowed beneath the broad temples with the light of youth's imperial dream of fame. What human creature could accept the limited fact of being mere man, mere woman only, while Cicely played? Such music as hers recalled and revealed the earliest splendour of the days when Poesy was newly born,--when gods and goddesses were believed to walk the world in large and majestic freedom,--and when brave deeds of chivalry and self-sacrifice became exalted by the very plenitude of rich imagination, into supernatural facts of heaven conquering, hell-charming prowess. Not then was man made to seem uncouth, or mean and savage in his attempts to dominate the planet, but strong, fearless, and endowed with dignity and power. Not then was every noble sentiment derided,--every truth scourged,--every trust betrayed,-every tenderness mocked,--and every sweet emotion made the subject of a slander or a sneer.