“It won’t be like that,” she said. And there entered her voice an unaccustomed note of warmth. It was the pity again, an old sense of sorrow.
“Besides,” she continued, “the day will come when I must go to Paris.... You see, I will have to polish off there ... I can live with Lily. It won’t cost anything. You see, we can’t forget that. We have to think of it. It’s nothing new.... I told you that in the beginning.”
For a long time there was no sound in the room save that of Ellen’s music, soft, beautiful, appealing, as if she used it now as a balm for the wounds caused by all she had been forced to say. Presently her strong beautiful fingers wandered into the Fire Music and the tiny room was filled with a glorious sound of flame and sparks, wild yet subdued, thrilling yet mournful. And then for a time it seemed that, wrapped in the color of the music, they were both released and swept beyond the reach of all these petty troubles. When at last the music ceased, Clarence roused himself slowly and, coming to her side, knelt there and placed his arms about her waist, pressing his head against her. There was in the gesture something pitiful and touching, as if he felt that by holding her thus he might be able to keep her always. The little vein in his throat throbbed with violence. There were times when his adoration became a terrible thing.
It was the first time in all their life together that he had ever done anything so romantic, so beautiful, and Ellen, looking down at him in a kind of amazement, must have understood that there were forces at work quite beyond her comprehension—something which, for the moment, overwhelmed even his shame of love. The act, by its very suddenness, appeared to strike a response in the girl herself, for she leaned toward him and fell to stroking his hair.
“I didn’t know,” she said softly, “that you could be like this.... It frightens me.... I didn’t know.”
His arms slowly held her more and more tightly, in a kind of fierce desperation. “You won’t go,” he murmured, “you won’t leave me.... There would be nothing left for me ... nothing in the world.”
“I’ll come back to you.... It won’t be for long. Perhaps, if there is money enough you could go with me.”
But all the same, she was troubled by that simple act of affection. Somehow, she had never thought of his love in this fashion.
The rest of the evening was raised upon a different plane, new and strange in their existence together. Some barrier, invisible as it was potent, had given way suddenly, out of Clarence’s dread of the future it seemed that there was born a new and unaccountable happiness. Ellen, watching him slyly with a look of new tenderness, played for him the simple music which he loved.
But at midnight when, at last, the music came to an end Clarence asked, “Where are you going to play to-morrow?”