"Oh, you're such a genius for making things seem right! Now looking at it that way, I'm quite reconciled to your being nice to me. Still I want you to promise that if you ever feel like swearing, you will."
"I promise," she responded solemnly.
"Don't do things—or not do things—because you're sorry for me,
Ernestine."
"We are 'sorry for' people who are unequal to things. I'm sorry with you, not for you, Karl."
"Ernestine,"—with an affectionate little laugh—"is there anything you don't understand?"
"You might play a little for me," he said after a silence. "Play that thing that ends in a question."
"Of Liszt's?"
"Yes; the one that leaves you wondering."
At first she had resented bitterly her not being able to play more satisfyingly. If only music were her work! It seemed an almost malicious touch that fate, in taking away Karl's own work, had also shut him out from hers. Resentment at that had made it hard for her to play for him at all, at first. But she had overcome that, and had been able to make music mean much to them both. They loved especially the music which seemed to translate for them things within their own hearts.
But to-night when Ernestine had left him pondering a minute the question he said Liszt always left with him, she turned, eagerly it seemed, to lighter things. She played a little Nevin, played it with a lightness, gladsomeness, he had never felt in her touch before. He said Nevin helped him to see things, that he could see leaves moving on their branches, could see the shadows falling on the hillsides where the cattle were grazing, as he listened to Nevin. But it did not bring the pictures to-night. It opened up new fears.