All that light-hearted chatter and new found contentment, all that brightness would die. Grief for the man she loved, hatred of the man who had supplanted him, anguish, perplexity, terror, would take their places.
When the terrible meal was over, she ordered coffee to be served in the music-room. He lingered behind for a moment, fiddling with a cigarette. Then, when he came into the hall with the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead, he heard the notes of the piano.
It was a Mazurka of Chopin’s, played with gaiety and brilliancy, yet no funeral march ever sounded more fatefully in the ears of mortal.
He could not do it. Then—he turned the handle of the music-room door and entered.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SECOND HONEYMOON
Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in daylight, and different.
She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski’s Mélodie Op. 8. No. 3, a lonesome sort of tune it seemed to him, as he dropped into a chair, crossed his legs and listened.