“Do you hear?” asked Thomas and his hands stopped in the air in the middle of the movement.
“I have heard it for a long time.” Anne’s lips trembled while she tried to smile. They both became silent again and the weevil continued its work in the old house.
Thomas started when the steps of Adam Walter resounded from the corridor. He went to meet him and took the violin case out of his hand.
“Welcome, dear troubadour,” then, as if he had himself noticed his careless irony, he added: “Do sit down, my dear professor,” and offered cigars to his guest.
“But of course, you want to make music. My wife has already started, an hour ago, to air the piano.” He laughed quietly, looking mockingly at the end of Walter’s necktie which pointed rigidly into the air beside his white collar.
“What is the news in town?”
“I only see musicians,” said Walter with good-natured condescension, “and they are fighting at present over the score of the artist Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. They are coming to blows.”
“Do tell me, professor, do you really take those things seriously? Do you consider Art something quite serious?”
Adam Walter wrinkled his low brow. He smiled with mocking forbearance.
Anne looked at him as if making a request that he should not continue the subject. It was always painful to her when her husband talked of these things. She found him on these occasions hopelessly inconsequent, obstinately perverse. She did not like to see him like that.