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Excerpt from If I Were King
Over all the clatter this woman's voice rose sud denly as clear as the call of a thrush, and the hot space seemed to cool and the hot air to clean as she mug. She who sang was a girl of five and twenty, whom it had pleased to clothe her ripe womanhood in a boy's habit, that clasped her fine body as close as a second skin, and she might have passed for a man no otherwhere than in a madhouse. She looked very charming in the stained and faded daintiness of her male attire. She wore a green velvet doubletthe strings. Rene de Montigny turned his dark, well-featured face in a sweeping leer that seemed to taste the familiar graces with gusto. Devilish good advice, Dollies, he shouted, and as he spoke he hugged the nearest girl close to him, and tilting up her chin with his free hand, kissed her noisily. The girl squealed a little at his roughness; the other pairs laughed and clasped after his example, only the singer, unheeding, lifted her sweet voice again, and this time there was a savour of gall in the sweet ness of the honey.
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