If you do not play upon it we separate forever
The lights were lowered, a single calcium playing with its soft and silvery rays upon his face and shoulders. The expectant audience scarcely breathed as he began his theme. It was pity—pity molded into a concord of beautiful sounds, and when he began the second movement it was but a continuation of the first; his fingers sought but one string, that of pity. Again he played, and once more pity stole from the violin.
When he left the stage Mildred rushed to him. “You did not touch that string; you refuse my wish?” and the sounds of mighty applause without drowned his pleading voice.
“I told you if you refused me I was lost to you forever! Do you understand?”
Diotti returned slowly to the center of the stage and remained motionless until the audience subsided. Facing Mildred, whose color was heightened by the intensity of her emotion, he began softly to play. His fingers sought the string of Death. The audience listened with breathless interest. The composition was weirdly and strangely fascinating.
The player told with wondrous power of despair,—of hope, of faith; sunshine crept into the hearts of all as he pictured the promise of an eternal day; higher and higher, softer and softer grew the theme until it echoed as if it were afar in the realms of light and floating o’er the waves of a golden sea.
Suddenly the audience was startled by the snapping of a string; the violin and bow dropped from the nerveless hands of the player. He fell helpless to the stage.
Mildred rushed to him, crying, “Angelo, Angelo, what is it? What has happened?” Bending over him she gently raised his head and showered unrestrained kisses upon his lips, oblivious of all save her lover.
“Speak! Speak!” she implored.
A faint smile illumined his face; he gazed with ineffable tenderness into her weeping eyes, then slowly closed his own as if in slumber.