Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/100

 And much more in the like strain did that violin say to them, and the public heard it and understood it, trembled, and wept salt tears. It was like a trumpet call to judgment; an invisible hand wrote the words of fate and the words were comprehensible to all. The audience half rose from their places, to see who it was that could thus speak with his strings and their hearts heaved with one common emotion. He who but a little moment before was last in the theatre was now first. He singly had changed the whole aspect of the theatre—changed, nay, revolutionized it. They were but simple tones, but they crashed and sawed. The public swayed the head in one common movement, it seethed in one common turmoil of feeling, but it was silent. That silence was ominous.

And how passed it on the stage? On the stage was a garden and in it a gay company.

When Krista heard that melody, she left her gay companions, ran across the stage even to the footlights, ran even to the orchestra, and staggered back amongst her gay company. But it was not given her to rest there. She sprang to her feet once more, wrung both her hands, raised them clasped to heaven, then pressed them to her heart, then tore over the stage like one distraught, then seemed to shrink cowering into herself, then again raised herself to her feet with an effort as if she wished to retain her self-command, but in that over tension of