In spite of
the season, Mrs. Vyse managed to scrape together a dinner-party
consisting entirely of the grandchildren of famous people. The
food was poor, but the talk had a witty weariness that impressed
the girl. One was tired of everything, it seemed. One launched
into enthusiasms only to collapse gracefully, and pick oneself up
amid sympathetic laughter. In this atmosphere the Pension
Bertolini and Windy Corner appeared equally crude, and Lucy saw
that her London career would estrange her a little from all that
she had loved in the past.
The grandchildren asked her to play the piano.
She played Schumann. "Now some Beethoven" called Cecil, when the
querulous beauty of the music had died. She shook her head and
played Schumann again. The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It
broke; it was resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle
to the grave. The sadness of the incomplete--the sadness that is
often Life, but should never be Art--throbbed in its disjected
phrases, and made the nerves of the audience throb.
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