“By the way,” she said, “I studied something for you before mother died, but you haven’t heard it yet. I’ll play it when the little one’s finished. I want you to hear how strange it is.”

The countess had real talent, and a subtle comprehension of the emotion that flows through sound. It had always been one of her surest powers over the painter’s sensibility.

As soon as Annette had finished Schumann’s Pastoral Symphony, the countess rose, took her place, and awakened a strange melody through her fingers, a melody of which every phrase seemed a complaint, even manifold complaints, changing, numerous, then interrupted by a single note, continually recurring, dropping into the evident melody, shattering it like an incessant, persecuting cry, the insatiable call of importunity.

But Olivier was looking at Annette, who had just seated herself in front of him, and he heard nothing, understood nothing.