When she had stopped playing he rose and held out his hand to say
good-night.
"Thank you. I don't think so badly of my life now. You've given me one
perfect moment."
"Are you so fond of music?"
She was about to ring when he prevented her.
"Please don't ring. I can find my way. I'd rather."
She judged that he desired to keep the perfection of his moment
unimpaired. She understood his feeling about it, for the Sonata
Appassionata is a most glorious and moving composition, and she had
played it well.
It was true that he desired to be alone; and he took advantage of his
solitude to linger in the picture gallery. He went down the double
row of portraits that began with Sir Thomas, the maker of madrigals,
and ended with Sir Frederick, the father of Lucia. He paused at each,
searching for Lucia's likeness in the likeness of those dead and gone
gentlemen and ladies; gentlemen with grave and intellectual faces,
some peevish, others proud (rather like Jewdwine), ladies with faces
joyous, dreamy, sad, voluptuous, tender and insipid, faces alike only
in their indestructible racial distinction. Lucia had taken nothing
from them but what was beautiful and fine; hers was the deep-drawn
unconscious beauty of the race; beauty of flesh and blood purified,
spiritualized in its passage through the generations, beauty that
gives the illusion of eternity, being both younger and older than the
soul. It was as if Nature had become Art in the making of Lucia,
forming her by the subtlest processes of selection and rejection.
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