Two men there were, however, among those in the hall, who suspected something of the strain it cost him to keep his rebellious temperament in check: they knew that his apparent calm was but a mask. The two were Blad and Abel Grahl, sitting together in the front row.
The serene progress of the Andante was undisturbed by any sound from those in front. Ormarr felt as if his listeners were turned to stone, and his playing was caressing them like a gentle breeze.
Then suddenly there came over him an irresistible desire to jerk them back to life—to startle them, set them fluttering and cackling like a pack of frightened fowls. To tear at their sense, to render their innermost souls, to fling at them, like a fiery volcanic eruption, something unexpected and terrible—something unheard of.
In a fraction of a second it had come. A bursting of all bonds that chained his ungovernable mind: reason, duty, ambition, the fear of consequences. It was as if in a moment he flung from him the prejudices and traditions in which men are wont to dress, and stood there before them in primeval nakedness.
He saw Grahl trying to rise: trying to prevent something he knew was coming....
And half unconsciously, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world, he plunged blasphemously from Beethoven’s Andante into Waldteufel’s “Valse d’Espagne.”
Ormarr was cool and calm as ever, but pale as a ghost. The music raced away madly into the waltz, laughing and crying in complete abandon.
A feeling of something uncanny seized the audience for a second; as if icy waters had overwhelmed them in flood, depriving them of movement, suffocating all cries for help.
Grahl rose to his feet, and opened his mouth as if to cry aloud. Then he fell back in his chair, without a sound.
Suddenly Ormarr stopped playing; his arms fell to his sides, and he stood on the platform laughing—a tremulous, uneasy laugh. Then he turned and fled.