
    »What! Graceful Consort? I don't think it suits your voice.«
    »Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip will have it, is the
grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent voices are usually
of that opinion.«
    »Philip burst into one of his invectives against The Creation the other
day,« said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. »He says it has a sort of sugared
complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the
birthday fête of a German Grand-Duke.«
    »O pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and Eve
unfallen, in paradise. Now, then - the recitative, for the sake of the moral.
You will sing the whole duty of woman - And from obedience grows my pride and
happiness.«
    »O no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the tempo, as you will,« said
Lucy, beginning to play the duet.
    Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears, must be that in
which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs
from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between
the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds
and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to
supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The
contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no
embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. In the
provinces, too, where music was so scarce in that remote time, how could the
musical people avoid falling in love with each other? Even political principle
must have been in danger of relaxation under such circumstances; and the violin,
faithful to rotten boroughs, must have been tempted to fraternise in a
demoralising way with a reforming violoncello. In this case, the linnet-throated
soprano, and the full-toned bass, singing,
 
»With thee delight is ever new,
With thee is life incessant bliss,«
 
believed what they sang all the more because they sang it.
    »Now for Raphael's great song,« said Lucy, when they had finished the duet.
»You do the heavy beasts to perfection.«
    »That sounds complimentary,« said Stephen, looking at his watch. »By Jove,
it's nearly half-past one. Well, I can just sing this.«
    Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the
