“Perhaps this isn’t the music they care for.”
“The old people?”
“Yes; probably they remember other tunes. Shall I ask the orchestra to play something that was heard all over London thirty—forty—fifty years ago? Shall I?”
They are for ever asking each other questions.
“Do you think anyone would dance to it?”
“I don’t know. Would we dance to this—fifty years on?”
He brushed aside the unimaginable future. At this moment she was his, her voice speaking close to him, the curve of her cheek and forehead clear beneath his eyes. He imagined suddenly that he would remember this instant, that his future would be full of it; and it took to itself already some of the glamour of history.
“Oh,” said she, “there’s Mr. Ordith watching us!”
The charm was lifted. He could not endure that another should peer over his shoulder into the history-book of fancy, or that a stranger’s eye should witness the building of this magic temple in which the moment was to be preserved against the assaults of all time. Soon the music faded into silence. A few feet slid on, and then stopped. The room filled with human voices.