"Why did you come so late?" she asked at last, "I tried to find you. You never replied."
"I did not know. I did not know," he said…. "Tell me, was it you who came to my aid so many times without my guessing who it was?… Do I owe it to you that I was able to go back to Germany? Were you my good angel, watching over me?"
She said:
"I was glad to be able to do something for you. I owe you so much!"
"What do you owe?" he asked. "I have done nothing for you."
"You do not know," she said, "what you have been to me."
She spoke of the days when she was a little girl and met him at the house of her uncle, Stevens, and he had given her through his music the revelation of all that is beautiful in the world. And little by little, with growing animation she told him with brief allusions, that were both veiled and transparent, of her childish feeling for him, and the way in which she had shared Christophe's troubles, and the concert at which he had been hissed, and she had wept, and the letter she had written and he had never answered: for he had not received it. And as Christophe listened to her, in all good faith, he projected his actual emotion and the tenderness he felt for the tender face so near his own into the past.
They talked innocently, fondly, and joyously. And, as he talked,
Christophe took Grazia's hand. And suddenly they both stopped: for
Grazia saw that Christophe loved her. And Christophe saw it too….
For some time Grazia had loved Christophe without Christophe knowing or caring. Now Christophe loved Grazia: and Grazia had nothing for him but calm friendship: she loved another man. As so often happens, one of the two clocks of their lives was a little faster than the other, and it was enough to have changed the course of both their lives….
Grazia withdrew her hand, and Christophe did not stay her. And they sat there for a moment, mum, without a word.