m in Norwegian. She remembered the moment
of taking her eyes away from the singer and the platform, and feeling
the crowded room and the airlessness, and then the song going steadily
on from note to note as she listened... no trills and no tune... saying
something. It stood in the air. All the audience were saying it. And
then the fair-haired woman had sung the second verse as though it was
something about herself--tragically... tragic muse.... It was not her
song, standing there in the velvet dress.... She stopped it from going
on. There was nothing but the movement of the lace round her shoulders
and chest, her expanded neck, quivering, and the pressure in her
voice.... And then there had been Herr Bossenberger, hammering
and shouting it out in the saal with Millie, and everything in the
schoolroom, even the dust on the paper-rack, standing out clearer and
clearer as he bellowed slowly along. And then she had got to know that
everybody knew about it; it was a famous song. There were people singing
it everywhere in German and French and English--a girl singing about her
lover.... It was not that; even if people sang it like that, if a real
girl had ever sung something like that, that was not what she meant...
"the winter may pass"... yes, that was all right--and mountains with
green slopes and narrow torrents--and a voice going strongly out and
ceasing, and all the sky filled with the sound--and the song going on,
walking along, thinking to itself.... She looked about as Millie's voice
ceased trembling on the last high note. She hoped no one would hum the
refrain. There was no one there who knew anything about it.... Judy?
Judy knew, perhaps. Judy would never hum or sing anything. If she did,
it would be terrible. She knew so much. Perhaps Judy knew everything.
She was sitting on the low sill of the window behind the piano sewing
steel beads on to a shot silk waistband held very close to her
eyes. Minna could. Minna might be sitting in her plaid dress on the
window-seat with her embroidery, her smooth hair polished with bay-rum
humming Solveig's song.

The housekeeper brought in the milk and rolls and went away downstairs
again. The cold milk was very refreshing but the room grew stifling as
they all sat round near the little centre table with the French window
nearly closed, shutting off the summer-house and garden. Everybody in
turn seemed to be saying "Ik kenne meine Tasse sie ist svatz." Bertha
had begun it, holdin