Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/182

 "Moments Musicaux," not without feeling, but nervously, as if she feared to touch the notes.

"It is awful," she exclaimed, just as she played the final chord. "May I not stop? You cannot pretend that it is a pleasure to listen."

"Yes, I can, and also you ought to be ashamed of being nervous before me."

"Nervous? I am trembling all over!"

"You cannot see properly any longer. I will fetch the lamp."

"No, for God's sake, let me, at any rate, have that excuse."

The exceedingly lively, and at the same time fantastic and deeply-moving, impromptu, which she now started, was treated with much more ease and courage, and though she failed once or twice, I had a sincere pleasure in her really musical rendering. After this I expected that she would want to stop, and I was prepared with persuasions to make her continue. But she had scarcely taken her hands off the notes, before she took down the "Sonatas" of Beethoven from the top of the piano.

"If it has to be, let it be," she exclaimed gaily. "One might just as well be bold. I should like you to fetch the lamp, Harald, so that I can see all my dropped notes lying upon the floor."

I had expected that she would play "The Marche Funèbre," the first movement of "The Moonlight Sonata," or something equally manageable, one of those pieces about which one can say that they are naturalised in the drawing-room; but to my surprise I heard, while I lit the lamp in the passage, that it was the grand Waldstein Sonata she was attacking, and playing with no lack of passion. She had evidently sent me out for the lamp so that she might