...
"I say," he said when I had done, "that's fine. I didn't know those
things could play like that. I'm all astir..."
She came and stood over me, looking at me. "I'm going to have a
concert," she said abruptly, and laughed uneasily and hovered at the
pigeon-holes. "Now--now what shall I have?" She chose more of Brahms.
Then we came to the Kreutzer Sonata. It is queer how Tolstoy has loaded
that with suggestions, debauched it, made it a scandalous and intimate
symbol. When I had played the first part of that, she came up to the
pianola and hesitated over me. I sat stiffly--waiting.
Suddenly she seized my downcast head and kissed my hair. She caught at
my face between her hands and kissed my lips. I put my arms about her
and we kissed together. I sprang to my feet and clasped her.
"Beatrice!" I said. "Beatrice!"
"My dear," she whispered, nearly breathless, with her arms about me.
"Oh! my dear!"
II
Love, like everything else in this immense process of social
disorganisation in which we live, is a thing adrift, a fruitless thing
broken away from its connexions.
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