He even said:
"Suppose your kindness were the reflection of something still more lovely, which we cannot see with these eyes?"
He went on to other, similar rhapsodies, such phrases as bubble from the lips of those who, in the extremity of despair, exhausted by their sufferings, become, with a sigh of relief, like little children. Amid the shadows of the alcove his eyes shone; and even his body, helpless in the wheel chair, quivered as if with new life.
"If you had appeared sooner! The music I might have written! But then, everything would be different. There would have been no reason for your pity."
On the hearth the log that was nearly consumed fell with a shower of sparks, shot forth one last flame, which brightened the room that had become for a moment a whole world. The light flashed over the many rows of books, which made Lilla imagine a vast human audience, all aglow from a final blaze of genius.
She leaned toward him, staring into his eyes as one who would summon from a sepulchre something more precious than love.
He understood her, and assented:
"Yes, what a victory, eh? Even on the threshold of death! And even though the inspiration was the embodiment of pity only! But men before me—though not so far gone, perhaps—have transmitted to the world the songs that rose in their hearts as a result of unconsummated, even unrequited, love. Who knows? That, too, may come just in time. I may write one more song."
Before her mind's eye there sprang out the full picture of her part in such a triumph.
Was it not she who would virtually be the creative force? Had he not become, in these last days of his, a shattered instrument that she, alone, could make musical again? And her long-thwarted aspirations coalesced into this desire, in which, it may be, her compassion was disorganized by egotism, her compunctions swallowed up in ruthlessness.