“Hateful! Ah! why can't we invent some new mode of expression for ourselves—you and I?”
“Because we are human beings, and one network of tangled limitations.”
“You make me cry with anger,” she said.
And when he looked, he saw that there were tears shining in her eyes.
At that moment a ghastly sensation of compunction swept over him. What had he done? A deep wrong, the deepest wrong man can do. He had made an experiment, as a scientist may make an experiment. He had vivisected a soul, but the soul was yet ignorant of the fact. When it knew, would it die? But then he told himself he had to do it. For he loved passionately, and was certain that he could only gain the heart he had not yet completely won by gaining this heart that he had completely won. He had made an experiment. If it failed! But it could not fail. All that Clarice said, all that she thought, all that she desired, Betty said, thought, desired. After the necessary interval the echo must follow the voice. And he smiled to himself.
“Why do you smile like that?” Clarice asked.
“Because—because I thought I heard an echo,” he replied. And then they kissed again. He, with his eyes shut, forced his imagination to tell him that the lips he pressed were the lips of Betty. She thought only of the lips of love, that burn up all the recollections of the lonely years, all the phantoms which dwell in the deserts through which women pass to joy—or to despair.
The Austrian pianist was exhausted. Even his long hair could no longer sustain his failing energies. He expired magnificently, the seventh rhapsody of Liszt serving as his bier. Lady Betty came out into the garden.
“How unmusical you two are,” she said; “his playing was exquisite.”