“Wait, wait. You shall see life and sunshine, all in the most beautiful music.”
The sombre scene offered the consolation, suddenly insufficient, that she had found in the past in sliding idly into novels, the restful sense of vicarious life. She had heard of a wonderful philosophy in Faust, and wondered at Mr. Shatov’s claim for its charm. But there was, she felt, no space, on the stage, for philosophy. The scene would change, there was “charm” and sunshine and music ahead. This scene itself was changing as she watched. The old man talking to himself was less full of meaning than the wonderful German interior, the pointed stonework and high, stained windows, the carved chairs and rich old manuscripts. Even as he talked, the light from the night-sky, pouring down outside on a beautiful old German town, was coming in. And presently there would be daylight scenes. The real meaning of it all was scenes, each with their separate, rich, silent significance. The scenes were the story, the translation of the people the actual picture of them as they were by themselves behind all the pother. … She set herself, drifting in solitude away from the complications of the present, to watch Germany. The arrival of Mephistopheles was an annoying distraction suggesting pantomine. His part in the drama was obscured by Mr. Shatov’s whispered eulogies of Chaliapin, “the only true Mephistopheles in Europe.” It certainly seemed right that the devil should have “a most profound bass voice.” The chanting of angels in Paradise, she suggested, could only be imagined in high clear soprano, whereat he maintained that women’s voices unsupported by the voices of men were not worth imagining at all.
“Pippa passes. It is a matter of opinion.”
“It is a matter of fact. These voices are without depth of foundation. What is this Pippa?”
“And yet you think that women can rise higher, and fall lower, than men.”