"There is so much, and it is nothing," said the girl dreamily. She moved a step toward the piano, his hands locked fast in hers. "Tell me again you love me!" she whispered.
He took off the great spectacles, and laid them beside the scrawled page.
"Look in my eyes," he said gently. A kind of grandeur had touched the homely features. The soul behind them looked out.
She bent toward him. A little sob broke from her lips. She lifted the hands and moved them swiftly toward the keys.
"Tell me!" she said.
With a smile of sadness, he obeyed the gesture.
Melody filled the room. It flooded the moonlight. The count, pacing back and forth, halted, a look of bewilderment in his face. He stepped swiftly toward the door.
The lights on the piano flared uncertainly. They fell on the figure at the piano. It loomed grotesque and grim, and melted away in flickering shadow. Music played about it. Strains of sadness swept over it in the gloom and drifted by, and the sweet, high notes rose clear. A little distance away the figure of the young countess stood in the shifting light. Her clasped hands hung before her. She swayed and lifted them, groping, and turned. Her father sprang to her. Side by side they passed into the night. The music sounded about them far and sweet.
Franz Schubert, with his youth and his wreaths of fame, his homely face and soul of fire, is dead these many years; but the soul of fire is not dead.... The Countess Esterhazy, framed for love, is dust and ashes in her marble house. The night music plays over her tomb.