piece of music that was being played, a piece which,
it might be, was in a different category from all the music that she had
ever heard before; and whether to abstain from them was not a sign of
her own inability to understand the music, and of discourtesy towards
the lady of the house; with the result that, in order to express by a
compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn, at one moment
she would merely straighten her shoulder-straps or feel in her golden
hair for the little balls of coral or of pink enamel, frosted with tiny
diamonds, which formed its simple but effective ornament, studying, with
a cold interest, her impassioned neighbour, while at another she would
beat time for a few bars with her fan, but, so as not to forfeit her
independence, she would beat a different time from the pianist's. When
he had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a Prelude by Chopin,
Mme. de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a tender smile,
full of intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction (that of
a competent judge) with the performance. She had been taught in her
girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures,
the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by
seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of
the direction in which they started, the point which one might have
expected them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those
fantastic bypaths only to return more deliberately--with a more
premeditated reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which,
if you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish--to
clutch at one's heart.

Brought up in a provincial household with few friends or visitors,
hardly ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude
of her old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now
passionate, whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing
couples, gathering them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment
to listen, where the wind sighed among the pine-trees, on the shore of
the lake, and seeing of a sudden advancing towards her, more different
from anything one had ever dreamed of than earthly lovers are, a slender
young man, whose voice was resonant and strange and false, in white
gloves. But nowadays the old-fashioned beauty of this music seemed
to have become a trifle stale. Having forfeited, some years back, the
esteem