by it than Mary was. It was so utterly her own, the cry of it so verily
the unacknowledged cry of her own heart, that the successive stanzas
buried themselves in it like unerring arrows. The intensity of its
climax was more poignant, more nearly intolerable, than anything in all
the music she had ever heard. Limp, wet, breathless, trembling all
over, she sat for a matter of minutes after that last ineffable
yearning note had died away.

There was a certain variety in the emotions of the rest of the audience,
but they met on common ground in the feeling of not knowing where to look
or what to say. Their individualities submerged in a great crowd, they
might--most of them--have allowed themselves to be carried away,
especially if they'd come in the expectation--founded on the experience
of other audiences--that they would be carried away. But to sit like
this, all very much aware of each other while a woman they knew, the
wife of a man they had long known, proclaimed a naked passion like that,
was simply painful. What they didn't know you see--there was no program
to tell them--was whether the thing was inspired or merely dreadful, and
when it was over they sat in stony despair, waiting, like the children of
Israel, for a sign.

It was LaChaise who broke the spell by crossing the room and
unceremoniously displacing Novelli at the piano. He turned back to the
beginning of the score and began reading it, at first silently, then
humming unintelligible orchestral parts as he was able to infer them from
the transcription; finally with noisy outbursts upon the piano, to which
din Novelli contributed with one hand reached down over the conductor's
shoulder. Paula standing in the curve of the instrument, her elbows on
the lid, followed them from her copy of the score. It got to the audience
that an alert attitude of attention was no longer required of them. That