Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/202

 That evening at dinner Harsanyi sat looking intently into a glass of heavy yellow wine; boring into it, indeed, with his one eye, when his face suddenly broke into a smile.

"What is it, Andor?" his wife asked.

He smiled again, this time at her, and took up the nut crackers and a Brazil nut. "Do you know," he said in a tone so intimate and confidential that he might have been speaking to himself,—"do you know, I like to see Miss Kronborg get hold of an idea. In spite of being so talented, she 's not quick. But when she does get an idea, it fills her up to the eyes. She had my room so reeking of a song this afternoon that I could n't stay there."

Mrs. Harsanyi looked up quickly, "'Die Lorelei,' you mean? One could n't think of anything else anywhere in the house. I thought she was possessed. But don't you think her voice is wonderful sometimes?"

Harsanyi tasted his wine slowly. "My dear, I 've told you before that I don't know what I think about Miss Kronborg, except that I 'm glad there are not two of her. I sometimes wonder whether she is not glad. Fresh as she is at it all, I 've occasionally fancied that, if she knew how, she would like to—diminish." He moved his left hand out into the air as if he were suggesting a diminuendo to an orchestra.