heart's warmth. Glittering facility
is put aside. Soft, sonorous, velvet-voiced the erstwhile brilliant
chatterer becomes a poet singing forth the riches of her secret self.

With the first tones drawn by Amaldi from the familiar that Sophy
thought she knew so well, she caught in a quick breath and leaned
forward. Was that the voice of her own excellent Steinway, that deep,
liquid, ringing sound that seemed to flow from the white keys without
concussion? She sat almost in tears for the perfect sound, the infinite
plaint of the music, as of a soul crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" The change to ineffable exultation--the triumph of the
great, crystal-white major chords that seemed to shout, "Death is
conquered!"

"Go on," she whispered when he paused. "Go on ... play me something of
your own this time...."

Amaldi glanced at her, then away again. A strange look had flashed into
his eyes as they rested on hers. It stirred her oddly. There had been
something half-mystic, half passionate in that fleeting look. She
wondered what it was he had thought of as that expression quickened his
eyes.

"Do you remember those lines in _Die Nord See_?" he asked the next
moment.

"Dort am hochgewoelbten Fenster
Steht eine schoene kranke Frau
Zart durchsichtig und marmorblass
Und sie spielt die Harfe und singt,
Und der Wind durchwuehlt ihre langen Locken
Und traegt ihr dunkles Lied
Ueber das weite, stuermende Meer."

"Yes. They always cast a sort of spell over me. But what made you think
of them just now, Amaldi?"

"Because they cast a spell over me, too. In fact they haunted me till I
put the story of that 'lovely, ill woman' into music. I'll play that for
you."

Sophy could not restrain an impulse of curiosity.

"Tell me first ... will you--what you thought her story was?"

Amaldi kept his eyes on the keyboard and spoke rather low and rapidly.

"I fancied," he said, "that love had made her a prisoner in that castle.
Then love had died. But love's ghost haunted the empty halls. I dreamed
that her sickness was a sickness of the heart and soul ... the regret
for love ... the fear of the ghost of love."

He began the opening movement as he finished speaking, a wild,
monotonous, plangent cadence, like the rhythmic beat of surf on a rocky
coast.

There is in the life of every artist, of every sensitive and lover, a
supreme inspirational hour, wherein expression seems simple as
breathing, a