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It was a story of the gods before the world was made, of love deep buried in far eternities of light, . . of vast celestial shapes whose wanderings through the blue deep of space were tracked by the birth of stars and suns and wonder-spheres of beauty, . . a fanciful legend of transcendent heavenly passion, telling how all created worlds throbbed amorously in the purple seas of pure ether, and how Love and Love alone was the dominant cloud of the triumphal march of the Universe...And with what matchless eloquence Sah-luma spoke the glowing lines! ..with what clear and rounded tenderness of accent! ... how exquisitely his voice rose and fell in a rhythmic rush like the wind surging through many leaves, . . while ever and anon in the very midst of the divinely entrancing joy that chiefly characterized the poem, his musicianly art infused a touch of minor pathos, a suggestion of the eternal complaint of Nature which even in the happiest moments asserts itself in mournful under-tones.

I then heard the men who were standing round us say one to another in under-tones, giggling with the fun of it, "Oh, what a shame of him! Did you hear what Bana said, and that fool's reply to it? What a shame of him to tell in that way."

Before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished, she was forced against her stubborn Scots will to sit down on a big stone by the roadside and rest, while the four that followed came up close, grinning and passing remarks in anything but under-tones. If the meaning of the words escaped her, their gestures left little to be misunderstood.

And if in managing plots for these illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference to his ulterior aims, if, in writing letters for them, he wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part, of his own immortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass were spent' running through them if, in composing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history which contained their solution, who that knows what those times were, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.

His veto could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then the soul of him 'within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, the man of the thirty legions, to whom this argument must be dedicated.

People went in and out, in and out, all through the long morning; little groups clustered together in the bar, discoursing in solemn under-tones; and other groups straggled on the seemed as if every living creature in Winchester was talking of the murder that had been done in the grove near St. Cross. Henry Dunbar sat in his own room, waiting for an answer to the telegraphic message.

"I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, and shun the Professor," he said. They spoke in under-tones, furtively watching the door. "I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy," said Laetitia. "Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think I can manage it." Again the laboratory door opened.

'And this, he observed, 'ought to satisfy all parties, as the Hercules would be thereby brought nearer to her destination, which was more than her captain deserved, after the needless chase he had led the Vincejo. This announcement seemed extremely unpalatable to the Yankee captain; and from a very energetic discussion which took place in under-tones between him and his passengers, it was evident they were dissuading him earnestly from some course which he was bent on taking.

'Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon! they all muttered in under-tones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went out into the maids' room.

He could hardly believe so sudden a change could have fallen upon the busy scene of a few hours before. The square was almost deserted. Its holiday appearance was gone. A few men occupied the benches. One or two groups stood beneath the trees and conversed in under-tones.