nd inevitable as birth and death. Amaldi, who was really
great in music, played that night as never until then, as it was never
given him to play again. Grief and love, these are the mighty angels
that urge genius to its fullest utterance.

As the music poured over Sophy its splendid and tumultuous mystery, she
felt like one chained upon a rock that the high tide overwhelms ...
drowning, suffocating in that passionate welter of sound. The
composition was in itself a masterpiece, but her knowledge of what it
was intended to express lent it a terrible lucidity. That woman in her
prison-castle, alone with the ghost of love--was she herself. It was her
secret malady--her soul's mortal sickness that he was revealing in that
daemonic candour of superb harmony.

She put up one hand over her eyes, as she sat gathered in upon herself.
She felt as if some barrier were too completely down between them, as
if, in some well-nigh insufferable way he touched the open wound in her
heart.

"He knows ... he knows...." she kept thinking. "He is telling me in this
way that he knows...."

And she could not be sure whether she shrank from his knowing, or
whether it was a relief to her.

There flashed silence. The exquisite, intolerable music ceased, went out
like flame. The dead silence was like a darkness.

Then Sophy forced herself to speak.

"You are very great, Amaldi," she said uncertainly, her hand still over
her eyes. "You ... you should give all your life to music."

He answered in a voice as strange as his look had been just now:

"All my life is not mine to give to music."

She could not think of any fitting response to this. Silence fell again.
She broke it nervously by asking him to play more for her, "something
not quite so despairing." She smiled as she said this, but Amaldi
thought: "She knows now that I know." This gave him a feeling of curious
satisfaction and relief. It seemed, somehow, the beginning of something,
the beginning of a new phase in their relations. Hope had stirred in
him. The future seemed to him vague yet promising like an uncharted sea.

He played for her an hour longer, all the music that she loved best.

They said good-night gravely, avoiding each other's eyes.

XXXI

It was about this time that Belinda came to a momentous resolution. She
said to herself: "I've made Morry feel that he wants me. Now I've got to
show him _how much_ he wants me. I'll just clear out and let him see
wh