"Can't you forgive me?" he asked at last.
"I do forgive you, with all my heart."
He became calm, and it seemed to me as if a dim smile was passing over his features.
He died the same night.
Three or four weeks went by. I was doing splendidly, as people say whose feet have not been amputated. I had been removed to another tent where there were only men who had behaved well, like me for instance, and who could be allowed to read, to smoke, to chat. Don't you believe that it was a sorry company. There was not one complete specimen of the species man. But we bore our lot cheerfully.
To say the truth I had not, for years, felt so pleased, so satisfied. The nightmare was over. When I recollected the years between my flight from Vienna until the outbreak of the war, and then the terrible months in Gallipoli and in France, I regarded my present situation as perfect bliss. Perhaps also had I freed myself, by writing my story, from the ever torturing memory of her, whom I have called my Austrian Love. For the first time Life was smiling again.... Life and Music. I may as well tell you that since I have returned home I have begun writing a symphonic poem. I hope you will come one day and applaud it. I found its themes while I was in that cheerful hospital. I found something else, too.
You know, of course, that in the hospitals kind people are always providing poor devils like me with all sorts of entertainments. If there was a proof necessary to show that music is not only an expensive noise, (what of a bombardment, then?) you have only to make inquiries about the number of concerts given to the wounded. Singers, pianists, violinists, unknown and famous, come to brighten our time of convalescence.
Such a party, one day, visited our hospital. The names were not celebrated ones, but we did not mind. The renowned artists were not always those we liked best.
There was first a man who played the violin. I remember it was Godard's Berceuse de Jocelyn. Then a baritone, who sang popular ballads. He had a beautiful voice and I should have liked to see his face. But I was still in bed and not allowed to move; and from where I was I could only hear, but not see the performers.
And then the piano attacked sounds familiar to me. And a feminine voice began: