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Book, page 121 / 551 with it; failing as it failed, and ceasing with its inspiration, as if the voice that sang lived only for and in the song. A moment of intense silence followed. Then, before Hugh had half recovered from the former, with an almost grand dramatic recoil, as if the second sprang out of the first, like an eagle of might out of an ocean of weeping, she burst into Scots wha hae. She might have been a new Deborah, heralding her nation to battle. Hugh was transfixed, turned icy cold, with the excitement of his favourite song so sung.--Was that a glance of satisfied triumph with which Euphra looked at him for a single moment?--She sang the rest of the song as if the battle were already gained; but looked no more at Hugh. The excellence of her tones, and the lambent fluidity of her transitions, if I may be allowed the phrase, were made by her art quite subservient to the expression, and owed their chief value to the share they bore in producing it. Possibly there was a little too much of the dramatic in her singing, but it was all in good taste; and, in a word, Hugh had never heard such singing before. As soon as she had finished, she rose, and shut the piano. "Do not, do not," faltered Hugh, seeking to arrest her hand, as she closed the instrument. "I can sing nothing after that," she said with emotion, or perhaps excitement; for the trembling of her voice might be attributed to either cause. "Do not ask me." Hugh respectfully desisted; but after a few minutes' pause ventured to remark: "I cannot understand how you should be able to sing Scotch songs so well. I never heard any but Scotch women sing them, even endurably, before: your singing of them is perfect." "It seems to me," said Euphra, speaking as if she would rather have remained silent, "that a true musical penetration is independent of styles and nationalities. It can perceive, or rather feel, and reproduce, at the same moment. If the music speaks Scotch, the musical nature hears Scotch. It can take any shape, indeed cannot help taking any shape, presented to it."
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