He repeated as if unable to find more fitting words:
"You are a wonderful, wonderful woman. There is no one like you. No one ... no one...."
"Dear Amaldi ... thank you," she said, much moved; and a little confused by his impetuousness she rose from the piano, reminding him of his promise to play for her. He submitted reluctantly. It seemed a pity, he protested, to play after such singing. And now he flushed with the inner tension of his thought, then paled again—for he was sure now, quite sure, that love had failed her a second time; her own love as well as another's. The passion in her voice had been the passion of renunciation.
He began with an étude of Bach. It was the nun in her mood that he played to.
As an instrument the piano resembles a woman who speaks many languages quite well. She speaks to aliens in their different tongues and people think "what a clever linguist!" But sometime there comes one who understands her own native language. To him her soul goes forth; he draws from her true eloquence, the heart's warmth. Glittering facility is put aside. Soft, sonorous, velvet-voiced the erstwhile brilliant chatterer becomes a poet singing forth the riches of her secret self.
With the first tones drawn by Amaldi from the familiar that Sophy thought she knew so well, she caught in a quick breath and leaned forward. Was that the voice of her own excellent Steinway, that deep, liquid, ringing sound that seemed to flow from the white keys without concussion? She sat almost in tears for the perfect sound, the infinite plaint of the music, as of a soul crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The change to ineffable exultation—the triumph of the great, crystal-white major chords that seemed to shout, "Death is conquered!"
"Go on," she whispered when he paused. "Go on ... play me something of your own this time...."
Amaldi glanced at her, then away again. A strange look had flashed into his eyes as they rested on hers. It stirred her oddly. There had been something half-mystic, half passionate in that fleeting look. She wondered what it was he had thought of as that expression quickened his eyes.
"Do you remember those lines in Die Nord See?" he asked the next moment.
"Dort am hochgewölbten Fenster
Steht eine schöne kranke Frau
Zart durchsichtig und marmorblass
Und sie spielt die Harfe und singt,
Und der Wind durchwühlt ihre langen Locken
Und trägt ihr dunkles Lied
Ueber das weite, stürmende Meer."