woman, at the medicine bottles.
“What do they say?” he asked.
“The doctors think she may come round.”
“She will die,” he said.
Then he went with her to the window.
“See!” he said. “This is what they are singing.”
It was the Song-sheet of the Welcome to Quetzalcoatl.
Welcome to Quetzalcoatl.
Even as she read, she could hear the people outside singing it, as the reed-flutes unthreaded the melody time after time. This strange dumb people of Mexico was opening its voice at last. It was as if a stone had been rolled off them all, and she heard their voice for the first time, deep, wild, with a certain exultance and menace.
She could hear the curious defiance and exultance in the men’s voices. Then a woman’s voice, clear almost as a star itself, went up the road at the verse:
Strange!