“Have a good time!” she shouted and did not recognize her own voice. It could be cold and indifferent.
When Thomas descended the stairs, the sound of Anne’s piano reached him. A sad song echoed through the house.... He slammed the street door furiously, as if he sought to slay the music. He looked up from the cab. He suddenly remembered that Anne once used to look after him from the window. Once ... a long time ago....
“She is probably pleased now when I go and she can live for her music. That is what draws her and Adam Walter together.” He rejected roundly the image of Walter. He did not want to think of him and Anne at the same time, yet the two images would get mixed up in his brain and he felt as if he had been robbed.
The sound of the cab had passed. In the twilight of the sunshine room the music had broken off. Anne began to nurse the burning bitterness with which she thought of her husband. Could he not see that she suffered, that her smiles, her calm, her indifference were all his? Did he not know her face was all a mummery? A mask ... fearfully she raised her hand to her face as though she would snatch something from it....
At that moment a dawning light glimmered in the depths of her mind, mounting up through innumerable memories. An old, once meaningless tale worked its way out slowly from oblivion. First she only saw the setting: the small clockmaker’s shop, her grandfather in front of a large, semi-circular window, the old hand of Uncle Sebastian, the violet-coloured tail coat, the buckled shoes. She heard his voice again. Broken, unconnected words came to her mind, reached her heart ... and then, suddenly, there was light.
“No, people don’t know what their neighbour’s real face is like.... Everybody wears a mask, nobody has the courage to take it off, nobody dares to be the first because he cannot know whether the others will follow his example, or stone him.”
Anne’s thoughts repeated in despair the words of the old story: “Everybody wears a mask, everybody....” And perhaps the proud alone were the charitable, for they wore the mask of silence.
“Thomas,” she uttered his name aloud, as of old, when their love began. It seemed to her that she had found a torch which, on the dark road, lit up her husband’s real face. She began to expect him, though she knew he could not come back so soon. She waited for him through many long hours. Next day too she waited.
Evening came. Adam Walter arrived and again brought some flowers in his violin-case.
Anne became absent-minded and restless. The flowers only brought Thomas to her mind. Adam Walter’s voice seemed strange to her and his ardent glances irritated her. To-day not even music could bring them together.