"I have been thinking over what you said regarding your conception of the part."
She waited for him to tell her what conclusion he had come to, but he said nothing. At last he got up, and she followed him to the piano. When she came to the passage where Isolde tells Brangäne that she intended to kill Tristan, he stopped.
"But she is violent; hear these chords, how aggressive they are. The music is against you. Listen to these chords."
"I know those chords well enough. You don't suppose I am listening to them for the first time. I admit that there are a few places where she is distinctly violent. The curse must be given violently, but I think it is possible to make it felt that her violence is a sexual violence, a sort of wish to go mad. I can't explain. Can't you understand?"
"Yes, I think I do; you want to sing the first part of the act languidly. There is more in the music which supports your reading than I thought. In the passage where Isolde says to Brangäne, but really to herself, 'To die without having been loved by that man!' the love motive appears here for the first time, but more drawn out, broader than elsewhere."
She declared that Wagner had emphasised his meaning in this passage as if he had anticipated all the misreadings of this first act, and was striving to guard himself against them. She grew excited in the discussion. She had merely followed her instinct, but she was glad that Ulick had challenged her reading, for as they examined the music clause by clause, they found still further warrant for her conception.
"Ah, the old man knew what he was doing," she said; "he had marked this passage to be sung gloomily, and by gloomily he meant infinite lassitude." But this intention had not been grasped, and the singers had either sung it without any particular expression, or with a stupid stage expression which meant if possible something less than nothing. "Then, you see, if I sing the first half of the first act as wearily as the music allows me, I shall get a contrast—an Isolde who has not drunk the love potion. The love potion is of course only a symbol of her surrender to her desire."
Ulick would have liked to have gone through the whole of the music of the act with her. It was only in this way that he could get an idea of how her reading would work out. But in that moment each read in the other's eyes an avowal of which they were immediately ashamed, and which they tried to dissimulate.
"I am tired. We won't have any more music this evening."
His thoughts seemed to pass suddenly from her, and then, without her being aware how it began, she found herself listening intently to him. He was talking in that strange, rhythmical chant of his about the primal melancholy of man, and his remote past always insurgent in him. Although she did not quite understand, perhaps because she did not quite understand, she was carried away far out of all reason, and it seemed to her that she could listen for ever. Nor could she clearly see out of her eyes, and she felt all power of resistance dissolve within her. He might have taken her in his arms and kissed her then; but though sitting by her, he seemed a thousand miles away; his remoteness chastened her, and she asked him of what he was thinking.