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Updated: June 23, 2025
They call me when I go into the room, and come to me when I open the door of their cage, and perch on my shoulder. One of them, Israfil, sings divinely. People who come to hear him see only a little brown bird with speckled breast, and call him a thrush; but I know he is Israfil, 'the angel of song, and most melodious of God's creatures; and he thinks that I have wings. He told me so!
He thought that the artist had taken a liberty with regard to himself, and been guilty of an impertinence so far as his lovely lady was concerned. "Well, so I told him," said the Boy. "But you know, dear Israfil, that in the interests of art as well as in the interests of science, men are carried away to such an extent that they sometimes forget to be scrupulous.
She threw herself down on her knees once more. "O Israfil! Israfil!" she cried, "only forgive me, and I will be true! only forgive me, and I will be true!" It was trying to rain outside. The wind swept down the Close in little gusts, and dashed cold drops against the window pane, and in the intervals sprays of the honeysuckle and clematis tapped on the glass, and the leaves rustled.
"Or from behind the sofa," the Boy suggested, with that enigmatical grin of his which the Tenor disliked, perhaps because it was enigmatical, "Like my new suit, Israfil?" he demanded in exactly the same tone. He had on a spotless flannel boating suit, with a silk handkerchief of many colours, knotted picturesquely round his neck. "It's too new," said the Tenor.
"Pipes and tobacco and roses!" he said at last. "What a mixture it sounds! But it doesn't look bad, dear Israfil," he added encouragingly. The Tenor made no remark; his pipes seemed to be all engrossing. He had just filled the bowl of one with a number of fuseeheads, cut off short, and now he popped in a light and corked them up.
In the little pause that followed, the Tenor glanced at his book again, and then he closed it. "Israfil," the Boy said suddenly, leaning forward to look at the book, as if to make sure, and speaking in an awestruck voice "is that the Bible you were reading?"
If in this day a soul shall act according to the precepts and the counsels of God, he will serve as a divine physician to mankind, and like the trump of Isráfíl, he will call the dead of this contingent world to life; for the confirmations of the Abhá Realm are never interrupted, and such a virtuous soul hath, to befriend him, the unfailing help of the Company on high.
After a time the Boy spoke diffidently. "But do you pray, Israfil?" he asked. "Yes," the Tenor answered. "I try to make prayer the attitude of my mind always I mean I try to be, and to do, and to think nothing that I could not make a subject of prayer at any time. But I do not think that a direct petition is the only or best way to pray.
"My father has a little place in the neighbourhood, and my grandfather lives here too." "Wells," the Tenor repeated. "I seem to know the name." "Oh, doubtless," the Boy observed. "This is a hotbed of Wellses. Israfil," he pleaded he was nestling beside the Tenor in the dim half light, watching the latter smoke "Israfil, tell me all about yourself?
Israfil, Antinous, Apollo, he might have stood as the model for any of them, or for a fit representation of the words of the wise man, "Rejoice, oh, young man, in thy youth, and let thine heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart." The relation between the two was problematic. Certainly there was no question of love on either side.
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