"Mary," she said, "if you will play, you must play gently."
"But Mamma—I can't. It goes like that."
"Then," said her mother, "don't play it. You can be heard all over the village."
"Bother the village. I don't care. I don't care if I'm heard all over everywhere!"
She went on playing.
But it was no use. She struck a wrong note. Her hands trembled and lost their grip. They stiffened, dropped from the keys. She sat and stared idiotically at the white page, at the black dots nodding on their stems, at the black bars swaying.
She had forgotten how to play Chopin's Fontana Polonaise.
XI.
Stone walls. A wild country, caught in the net of the stone walls.
Stone walls following the planes of the land, running straight along the valleys, switchbacking up and down the slopes. Humped-up, grey spines of the green mounds.