r would. Now a waltz ... after a jolly dinner and wine! ... But the
Chaconne! But Bach! But culture! The audience was visibly and audibly
restless. For about two hundred years the attempt to force this Chaconne
upon the public had been continuous, and it was still boring them. Of
course it was! The thing was unnatural.

And she herself was a fool; she was a ninny. And the alleged power of money
was an immense fraud. She had thought to perform miracles by means of a
banking account. For a moment she had imagined that the miracles had come
to pass. But they had not come to pass. The public was too old, too tired,
and too wary. It could not thus be tricked into making a reputation. The
forces that made reputations were far less amenable than she had fancied.
The world was too clever and too experienced for her ingenuous self.
Geniuses were not lying about and waiting to be picked up. Musa was not a
genius. She had been a simpleton, and the sacred Quarter had been a
simpleton. She was rather angry with Musa for not being a genius. And the
confidence which he had displayed a few hours earlier was just grotesque
conceit! And men and women who were supposed to be friendly human hearts
were not so in truth. They were merely indifferent and callous spectators.
The Foas, for example, were chattering in their box, apparently oblivious
of the tragedy that was enacting under their eyes. But then, it was perhaps
not a tragedy; it was perhaps a farce.

And what would these self-absorbed spectators of existence say and do, if
and when it was known that she was no longer a young woman of enormous
wealth? Would Dauphin have sought to compel her to enter his studio had he
been aware that her fortune had gone tip in smoke? She was not in a real
world. She was in a world of shams. And she was a sham in the world of
shams. She wanted to be back again in the honest realities of Moze, where
in the churchyard she could see the tombs of her great-great-grandfathers.
Only one extraneous interest drew her thoughts away from Moze. That
interest was Mr. Gilman. Mr. Gilman was her conquest and her slave. She
adored him because he was so wistful and so reliable and so adoring. Mr.
Gilman sat intent and straight upright in Madame Piriac's box and behaved
just as though Bach himself was present. He understood nothing of Bach, but
he could be trusted to behave with benevolence.

The music suddenly ceased. The Chaconne was finished. The gallery of
ent