The grand piano, littered with music, was a long business. When she passed the duster over the shining wood, she half closed her eyelids, as if she felt the caressing contact of satin; then she passed it over the keys, drawing from them a sort of formless, discordant music, in whose endless variations she revelled. Lucia neither played well, nor much; but when she met with a philharmonic friend, she would instal her at the piano, and herself in a Viennese rocking-chair, where she would close her eyes, beat time with her head and listen. Voiceless and spell-bound, she was one of the best and most ecstatic of listeners. Most of the music lying on the table was German; she specially affected the sacred harmonies of Bach and Haydn. But Aïda was always open on the reading-desk. Then there was the embroidery-frame, a stole for the church of the Madonna, her Madonna of the Bleeding Heart. Next to it stood a microscopic work-table, on which lay the beginning of a useless, spidery fabric. The chairs, the pouffs, the little armchairs, were all in different styles and colours, for she loathed uniformity. Her first prize for literature, a gold medal set in white satin, hung on the wall; underneath it was her first childish essay in writing. A bookshelf contained a few worn school-books, some novels, and the Lives of the Saints. And last of all came a large tea-rose with red marks, like blood-stains, on its petals, gummed into a velvet frame, the Rosa mystica. When she had finished, Lucia cast aside her duster, washed her hands, swallowed a few drops of syrup diluted with water to clear her throat of dust, returned to the sitting-room, threw herself down on her sofa, and let her fancies have free play.
IV.
Caterina Lieti entered, looking tiny in her furs; with her pink face peeping from under her fur cap.
“Make haste, dear; it’s late.”
“No, dear; it’s no good going to my poor people before four; it’s hardly two o’clock.”
“We are going elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere where we shall amuse ourselves.”
“I’m not going, I don’t want to amuse myself; I am more inclined to cry.”
“Why?”