This figure was first included as an attendant musician in the first composition of The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, she stands to the left of the mausoleum, next to the head of King Arthur. Not using the figure in the later designs, Burne-Jones thought it too good to completely abandon and in 1896 he took it up and made it an independent work. He altered the concept by adding a barred window in a wall, suggesting a prison, a theme which recurs in the Kelmscott Chaucer. In the Knyghtes Tale, two imprisoned brothers look out at Emelye as she walks in her garden. The same iron bars at a window appear in If Hope were not Heart should break (Christie's London, Christie, Manson and Woods) 2018, British Art: Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art 11 December 2018 Lot 104). The back of the frame bears a label in the artist's hand, which may suggest that it was exhibited before the artist's death, however it does not appear in the catalogues of the 1896 Fine Art Society exhibition or those of the New Gallery. The picture was purchased by the Horner family from Agnew's after Burne-Jones death. Another version of the subject, oil on board, a copy by a Studio assistant, was sold by Sotheby's on the 30th March 1994 lot 201.
The Answering String was described in the Burlington Fine Arts Club catalogue, 1899 as: "Design in gold and water colours of a female figure, with oriental drapery over her head, standing holding a Cithern [Cithara] in the Green Court of a Building by a Barred Window."
Cited in Bell, Record and Review 1910, p. 132 as: Unfinished picture in the Studio Christie's sale 16-18 July 1898.