"Quartette."

Through the eyes of the music director, an attraction between two singers is breaking up the group, yet on their last song he can feel "the passionate quality of their singing transcending the small hot room and the small bewildered minds" of the alto and himself.

Bates had much personal knowledge of choirs and singing through his father, Albert Bates, a choir director.

In John O'London's Weekly (May 24, 1940, with the title "Music When Soft Voices Die"), The Beauty of the Dead and Other Stories (1940), Twenty Tales (1951).