“Why? ...” and her hands raised doubtful, dreamy chords from the piano. Her tender, meek face became unconsciously tragical. She began to sing.... A deep question sang through her voice. The whole life of a woman sobbed in it, complained, implored. It rent the heart, it clamoured for the unattainable, the promises of past youth, the dream, the realization.
Adam Walter became obsessed by the rapt womanly voice. He went to the door, shut it carelessly, then leaned immobile against the wall.... He stood there spellbound, even after the last sound had died away. He was not in time to harden his features into calmness, and Anne understood his expression, because she was suffering herself at the time. She received with a grateful smile the tenderness which came to her.... They remained like that for an instant. Anne was the first to awake. And as if she wanted to wake him, she looked towards the door.
“I closed it,” said Walter humbly, “in order that your voice should be nobody’s but mine....”
Then he left and she gazed for a long time into the growing darkness. Her tenderness, which she had thought long extinct, was now ablaze.
Thomas came in. Anne remembered that her husband was going to shoot and knew he came to take leave.
“Has the troubadour gone?” Illey looked round the room. Suddenly he saw the flowers on the piano. “Now he has started to bring you flowers?”
Anne looked at him.
“Do you know, Thomas, it has struck me that you never give me any flowers.”
“You don’t think I am going to give you flowers grown on somebody else’s land?” Illey laughed harshly and left the room without a kiss, without a word of farewell.
They had never yet parted like this. Anne looked after him amazed.