What astonishing playing! Why had no one warned him of the presence of such a gift in this dazzling, prickly, unripe creature? He sat down against the wall of the house, as close as possible, but out of sight, and listened. All the romance of his spoilt and solitary life had come to him so far through music, and through such music as this! For she was playing Wagner, Brahms, and Rubinstein, interpreting all those passionate voices of the subtlest moderns, through which the heart of our own day has expressed itself even more freely and exactly than through the voice of literature. Hans Sachs' immortal song, echoes from the love duets in 'Tristan und Isolde,' fragments from a wild and alien dance-music, they rippled over him in a warm, intoxicating stream of sound, stirring association after association, and rousing from sleep a hundred bygone moods of feeling.
What magic and mastery in the girl's touch! What power of divination, and of rendering! Ah! she too was floating in passion and romance, but of a different sort altogether from the conscious reflected product of the man's nature. She was not thinking of the past, but of the future; she was weaving her story that was to be into the flying notes, playing to the unknown of her Whindale dreams, the strong, ardent unknown,--'insufferable, if he pleases, to all the world besides, but to _me_ heaven!' She had caught no breath yet of his coming, but her heart was ready for him.
Suddenly, as she put down her violin, the French window opened and Langham stood before her. She looked at him with a quick stiffening of the face which a minute before had been all quivering and relaxed, and his instant perception of it chilled the impulse which had brought him there.
He said something _banal_ about his enjoyment, something totally different from what he had meant to say. The moment presented itself, but he could not seize it or her.
'I had no notion you cared for music,' she said carelessly, as she shut the piano, and then she went away.
Langham felt a strange, fierce pang of disappointment. What had he meant to do or say? Idiot! What common ground was there between him and any such exquisite youth? What girl would ever see in him anything but the dull remains of what once had been a man!