II

The last chord of the nocturne brought the room sharply back. It was unchanged; lifeless and unmoved; nothing had passed to it from the little circle where she sat enclosed.⁠ ⁠… Her heart swelled and tears rose in her eyes. The room was old and experienced, full like her inmost mind of the unchanging past. Nothing in her life had any meaning for it. It waited impassively for the passing to and fro of people who would leave no impression. She had exposed herself and it meant nothing in the room. Life had passed her by and her playing had become a sentimental exhibition of unneeded life.⁠ ⁠… She was wretched and feeble and tired.⁠ ⁠… Life has passed me by; that is the truth. I am no longer a person. My playing would be the nauseating record of an uninteresting failure to people who have lived or a pandering to the sentimental memories of people whom life has passed by⁠ ⁠… —you played that like a snail crossed in love⁠—perhaps he was right. But something had gone wrong because I played with the intention of commenting on Alma’s way of playing.⁠ ⁠… That was not all. It did not end there. There was something in music when one played alone, without thoughts. Something present, and new . Not affected by life or by any kind of people.⁠ ⁠… In Beethoven. Beethoven was the answer to the silence of the room. She imagined a sonata ringing out into it, and defiantly attacked a remembered fragment. It crashed into the silence. The uncaring room might rock and sway. Its rickety furniture shatter to bits. Something must happen under the outbreak of her best reality. She was on firm ground. The room was nowhere. She cast sidelong half-fearful exultant glances. The room woke into an affronted silence. She felt astonishment at the sudden loud outbreak of assertions turning to scornful disgust. Entrenched behind the disgust something was declaring that she had no right to her understanding of the music; no business to get away into it and hide her defects and get out of things and escape the proper exposure of her failure. In a man it would have been excusable. The room would have listened with respectful flattering indulgent tolerance till it was over and then have relapsed untouched. This dingy woman playing with the directness and decision of a man was like some strange beast in the room.⁠ ⁠…