remember the voices better than anything else? I
think they must go deeper into us than other things. I have often fancied heaven
might be made of voices.«
    »Like your singing - yes,« said Mab, who had hitherto kept a modest silence,
and now spoke bashfully, as was her wont in the presence of Prince Camaralzaman,
- »Ma, do ask Mirah to sing. Mr. Deronda has not heard her.«
    »Would it be disagreeable to you to sing now?« said Deronda, with a more
deferential gentleness than he had ever been conscious of before.
    »Oh, I shall like it,« said Mirah. »My voice has come back a little with
rest.«
    Perhaps her ease of manner was due to something more than the simplicity of
her nature. The circumstances of her life had made her think of everything she
did as work demanded from her, in which affectation had nothing to do; and she
had begun her work before self-consciousness was born.
    She immediately rose and went to the piano - a somewhat worn instrument that
seemed to get the better of its infirmities under the firm touch of her small
fingers as she preluded. Deronda placed himself where he could see her while she
sang; and she took everything as quietly as if she had been a child going to
breakfast.
    Imagine her - it is always good to imagine a human creature in whom bodily
loveliness seems as properly one with the entire being as the bodily loveliness
of those wondrous transparent orbs of life that we find in the sea - imagine her
with her dark hair brushed from her temples, but yet showing certain tiny rings
there which had cunningly found their own way back, the mass of it hanging
behind just to the nape of the little neck in curly fibres, such as renew
themselves at their own will after being bathed into straightness like that of
water-grasses. Then see the perfect cameo her profile makes, cut in a duskish
shell where by some happy fortune there pierced a gem-like darkness for the eye
and eyebrow; the delicate nostrils defined enough to be ready for sensitive
movements, the finished ear, the firm curves of the chin and neck entering into
the expression of a refinement which was not feebleness.
    She sang Beethoven's »Per pietà non dirmi addio,« with a subdued but
searching pathos which had that essential of perfect singing, the making one
oblivious of art or manner, and only possessing one with the song. It was the
sort of voice that gives the impression of being meant like a bird's wooing for
an audience