Anna blushed a little, and said no more. Braun went on:
"When a woman loves, she wants to destroy, does she? That's a nice sort of thing to say! To destroy any one who is dear to you is to destroy yourself.—On the contrary, when one loves, the natural feeling is to do good to the person you love, to cherish him, to defend him, to be kind to him, to be kind to everything and everybody. Love is paradise on earth."
Anna sat staring into the darkness, and let him talk, and then shook her head, and said coldly:
"A woman is not kind when she loves."
Christophe did not renew the experiment of hearing Anna sing. He was afraid … of disillusion, or what? He could not tell. Anna was just as fearful. She would never stay in the room when he began to play.
But one evening in November, as he was reading by the fire, he saw Anna sitting with her sewing in her lap, deep in one of her reveries. She was looking blankly in front of her, and Christophe thought he saw in her eyes the strangely burning light of the other evening. He closed his book. She felt his eyes upon her, and picked up her sewing. With her eyelids down she saw everything. He got up and said:
"Come."
She stared at him, and there was still a little uneasiness in her eyes: she understood, and followed him.
"Where are you going?" asked Braun.
"To the piano," replied Christophe.