So thought Christophe: and life was on the verge of giving him the lie in a terrible fashion. The miracle is everywhere, like fire in stone: friction brings it forth. We have little notion of the demons who lie slumbering within ourselves. …
… Pero non mi destar, deh! parla basso! …
One evening when he was improvising at the piano, Anna got up and went out, as she often did when Christophe was playing. Apparently his music bored her. Christophe had ceased to notice it: he was indifferent to anything she might think. He went on playing: then he had an idea which he wished to write down, and stopped short and hurried up to his room for the necessary paper. As he opened the door into the next room and, with head down, rushed into the darkness, he bumped violently against a figure standing motionless just inside. Anna. … The shock and the surprise made her cry out. Christophe was anxious to know if he had hurt her, and took her hands in his. Her hands were frozen. She seemed to shiver—no doubt from the shock. She muttered a vague explanation of her presence there:
“I was looking in the dining-room. …”
He did not hear what she was looking for: and perhaps she did not say what it was. It seemed to him odd that she should go about looking for something without a light. But he was used to Anna’s singular ways and paid no attention to it. An hour later he returned to the little parlor where he used to spend the evening with Braun and Anna. He sat at the table near the lamp, writing. Anna was on his right at the table, sewing, with her head bent over her work. Behind them, in an armchair, near the fire, Braun was reading a magazine. They were all three silent. At intervals they could hear the pattering of the rain on the gravel in the garden. To get away from her Christophe sat with his back turned to Anna. Opposite him on the wall was a mirror which reflected the table, the lamp, the two faces bending over their work. It seemed to Christophe that Anna was looking at him. At first he did not pay much attention to it; then, as he could not shake off the idea, he began to feel uneasy and he looked up at the mirror and saw. … She was looking at him. And in such a way! He was petrified with amazement, held his breath, watched her. She did not know that he was watching her. The light of the lamp was cast upon her pale face, the silent solemnity of which seemed now to be fiercely concentrated. Her eyes—those strange eyes that he had never been able squarely to see—were fixed upon him: they were dark blue, with large pupils, and the expression in them was burning and hard: they were fastened upon him, searching through him with dumb insistent ardor. Her eyes? Could they be her eyes? He saw them and could not believe it. Did he really see them? He turned suddenly. … Her eyes were lowered. He tried to talk to her, to force her to look up at him. Impassively she replied without raising her eyes from her work or from their refuge behind the impenetrable shadow of her bluish eyelids with their short thick lashes. If Christophe had not been quite positive of what he had seen, he would have believed that he had been the victim of an illusion. But he knew what he had seen, and he could not explain it away.
However, as his mind was engrossed in his work and he found Anna very uninteresting, the strange impression made on him did not occupy him for long.
A week later Christophe was trying over a song he had just composed, on the piano. Braun, who had a mania, due partly to marital vanity and partly to love of teasing, for worrying his wife to sing and play, had been particularly insistent that evening. As a rule Anna only replied with a curt “No”; after which she would not even trouble to reply to his requests, entreaties, and pleasantries: she would press her lips together and seem not to hear. On this occasion, to Braun’s and Christophe’s astonishment, she folded up her work, got up, and went to the piano. She sang the song which she had never even read. It was a sort of miracle:—the miracle. The deep tones of her voice bore not the faintest resemblance to the rather raucous and husky voice in which she spoke. With absolute sureness from the very first note, without a shade of difficulty, without the smallest effort, she endued the melody with a grandeur that was both moving and pure: and she rose to an intensity of passion which made Christophe shiver: for it seemed to him to be the very voice of his own heart. He looked at her in amazement while she was singing, and at last, for the first time, he saw her as she was. He saw her dark eyes in which there was kindled
