but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a revelation for an audience,—­felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it.  And the voice was a wonderful actor too.  It could act the scenery as well.  You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:—­the great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray,

                        “The white-walled town,
     And the little gray church on the windy shore;”

and when she said, “Down, down, down!” you were indeed in the very depths of the sea—­and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and shimmering light.

But what a world of heart-break there was in her “Come, dear children, come away!” You felt you simply couldn’t bear her to say it again.  Next time you’d have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren’t ashamed, for suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece.

This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else too.  It began

     “The blessed damozel leaned out
       From the gold bar of heaven” ...

and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over.  And there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went: 

     “We two will lie i’ the shadow of
        That mystic living tree
      Within whose secret growth the Dove
        Is sometimes felt to be” ...

that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and then there was a curious verse with nothing but women’s names in it, yet somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and rather frightened.  Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil—­it was so they should bathe together in God’s sight—­and Theophil sent back as wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on.  Otherwise, of course, it would have been as wonderful as Jenny’s.

Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at the back, who during the last lecture on “Henrik Ibsen” had discovered a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school.

Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with the excitement and wonder of it all.

“How wonderful you are!  Doesn’t it seem strange to be so wonderful?” said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in Jenny’s room.