Then he had the portrait framed and a glass shade put over the rose, hoping that now things would be all right, but secretly fearing that they would not.
After that he went on a week’s journey; he returned home late at night and went straight to bed. He woke up once, imagining that the hanging lamp was burning.
When he entered the sitting-room late on the following morning, it was downright hot there, and everything looked frightfully shabby. The blinds were faded; the cover on the piano had lost its bright colours; the bound volumes of music looked as if they were deformed; the oil in the hanging-lame had evaporated and hung in a trembling drop under the ornament, where the flies used to dance; the water in the water-bottle was warm.
But the saddest thing of all was that her portrait, too, was faded, as faded as autumn leaves. He was very unhappy, and whenever he was very unhappy he went to the piano, or took up his violin, as the case might be....
This time he sat down at the piano, with a vague notion of playing the sonata in E minor, Grieg’s, of course, which had been her favourite, and was the best and finest, in his opinion, after Beethoven’s sonata in D minor; not because E comes after D, but because it was so.
But the piano was very refractory to-day. It was out of tune, and made all sorts of difficulties, so that he began to believe that his eyes and fingers were in a bad temper. But it was not their fault. The piano, quite simply, was out of tune, although a very clever tuner had only just tuned it. It was like a piano bewitched, enchanted.
He seized his violin; he had to tune it, of course. But when he wanted to tighten the E string, the screw refused to work. It had dried up; and when the conductor tried to use force, the string snapped with a sharp sound, and rolled itself up like a dried eel-skin.
It was bewitched!
But the fact that her photograph had faded was really the worst blow, and therefore he threw a veil over the altar.
In doing this, he threw a veil over all that was most beautiful in his life; and he became depressed, began to mope, and stopped going out in the evening.