“Shall I go away?” he asked. He admired every detail of her appearance, and the look in her eyes surprised him. “You would like to be alone and I cannot bear to leave you,” he said slowly, while still holding her hand.
His expression and intonation were not lost on her—they meant power in herself; he could not leave her; and the desire of power comes after love in the aspirations of some women.
“No, stay,” she said. “Sit down.”
He chose a chair near her and the silence was restful—most women consider it fatal. He had begun to compare her with other women.
“You heard my discord?”
“I heard it,” he replied.
“And interpreted it?”
“No, I cannot say that.”
“I will play to you,” she said, rising with a quick litheness which reminded him of a serpent.
She played Liszt’s arrangement of Mendelssohn’s “Auf Flügeln des Gesanges.”