Andrews sipped his tea slowly, looking now and then at Genevieve Rod who had suddenly begun talking very fast to Ronsard. She held a cigarette between the fingers of a long thin hand. Her large pale-brown eyes kept their startled look of having just opened on the world; a little smile appeared and disappeared maliciously in the curve of her cheek away from her small firm lips. The older woman beside her kept looking round the table with a jolly air of hospitality, and showing her yellow teeth in a smile.
Afterwards they went back to the sitting room and Andrews sat down at the piano. The girl sat very straight on a little chair beside the piano. Andrews ran his fingers up and down the keys.
“Did you say you knew Debussy?” he said suddenly. “I? No; but he used to come to see my father when I was a little girl.... I have been brought up in the middle of music.... That shows how silly it is to be a woman. There is no music in my head. Of course I am sensitive to it, but so are the tables and chairs in this apartment, after all they've heard.”
Andrews started playing Schumann. He stopped suddenly.
“Can you sing?” he said.
“No.”
“I'd like to do the Proses Lyriques.... I've never heard them.”
“I once tried to sing Le Soir,” she said.
“Wonderful. Do bring it out.”
“But, good Lord, it's too difficult.”