Anne’s eyes chanced to fall on Christopher. He seemed strikingly pale among the heavy, flushed faces. At the end of the table sat Sophie, mute, broken. Twice she raised her glass to her lips. She did not notice it was empty. Ignace Holt, the first assistant of the “Holy Trinity” Chemist’s shop, leaned towards her obtrusively.
Adam Walter had watched Anne interestedly for some time without saying a word. He thought her out of place in these surroundings. He found in her narrow face a disquieting expression of youthful calm. It seemed to the young man as if the warm colour of her hair, a shaded gold, were spreading under her skin, invading her innocent neck. Her chin impressed him as determined, a refined form of the chin of the Ulwings. Her nose was straight and short. Her smile raised the corners of her mouth charmingly.
He looked at her forehead. Her fine eyebrows seemed rather hard.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked involuntarily.
The girl looked at him surprised. The eyes of Adam Walter were just as brown and restless as those of his beautiful mother. His brow was low and broad with bulging temples. Anne had known him since her childhood, but till now she had never spoken to him. All she knew about him was that he had once gone to the same school as Christopher, that he was a poor scholar and an excellent fiddler.
“Do you think that people confide their thoughts to strangers?”
“The brave do,” said young Walter. “I want to say everything that passes through my mind. For example, that all these people here are unbearably tedious. Haven’t you noticed it? Not one among them dares say a thing that has not been said before. Not one does a thing his father and mother haven’t done before him.”
Adam Walter felt that he had caught the girl’s attention and became bolder.
“They have no sense whatever. If one of them is taller than the others he must go about the world stooping so that no one shall notice it; otherwise, for the sake of order, they might cut his head or his legs off. They have to tread the well-worn path of common-places. Greatness depends on official recognition. Please, don’t laugh. It is so. Just now old Münster told Sztaviarsky that ‘The Vampire’ and ‘Robert le Diable’ are the finest music in the world. Marschner and Meyerbeer. Rossini the greatest of all. Poor Schubert too. That is a comfortable doctrine. These composers can be admired without risk. They bear the hallmark on them. It is a pity it should all be music for the country fair. Schubert is like a spring shower. Many small drops, warm soft drops. Is it not so? Why do you shake your head? You love Schubert. I am sorry, very sorry. I only said all this to prove....”
He stopped. He stared into space.