Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/191

 is very strange you should be so mute in society."

"I never sang to a crowd in my life, and never would. Music is an impulse, or it is nothing. I could never sing save to some woman who"

He paused a moment.

"Who was music in herself," he added with a smile; it was not what had been upon his lips.

"Then you should not have sung to me," she said, still with half-closed eyes and a careless coldness in her voice. "I am all discord; have you not found that out?—every woman is, now-a-days; we have lost the secret of harmony; we are always wanting to be excited, and never succeeding in being anything but bored."

"These are mere words, Madame," he answered her, "I hope they are not true. By discord I think you only mean inconsistency. Pardon me—but I think you are all so wearied because of the monotony of your lives. I dare say that sounds very strangely to you, because you pursue all the pleasures and all the