playing. Adapt herself, is not the right expression--Charlotte's skill
and power enabled her, in order to please her husband, to keep up with
him when he went too fast, and hold in for him if he hesitated; but
Ottilie, who had several times heard them play the sonata together,
seemed to have learnt it according to the idea in which they accompanied
each other--she had so completely made his defects her own, that a kind
of living whole resulted from it, which did not move indeed according to
exact rule, but the effect of which was in the highest degree pleasant
and delightful. The composer himself would have been pleased to hear his
work disfigured in a manner so charming.

Charlotte and the Captain watched this strange unexpected occurrence in
silence, with the kind of feeling with which we often observe the
actions of children--unable exactly to approve of them, from the serious
consequences which may follow, and yet without being able to find fault,
perhaps with a kind of envy. For, indeed, the regard of these two for
one another was growing also, as well as that of the others--and it was
perhaps only the more perilous because they were both stronger, more
certain of themselves, and better able to restrain themselves.

The Captain had already begun to feel that a habit which he could not
resist was threatening to bind him to Charlotte. He forced himself to
stay away at the hour when she commonly used to be at the works; by
getting up very early in the morning he contrived to finish there
whatever he had to do, and went back to the castle to his work in his
own room. The first day or two Charlotte thought it was an accident--she
looked for him in every place where she thought he could possibly be.
Then she thought she understood him--and admired him all the more.

Avoiding, as the Captain now did, being alone with Charlotte, the more