entirely unaesthetic.

What Aaron was playing was not of his own invention. It was a bit of
mediaeval phrasing written for the pipe and the viol. It made the piano
seem a ponderous, nerve-wracking steam-roller of noise, and the violin,
as we know it, a hateful wire-drawn nerve-torturer.

After a little while, when he entered the smaller room again, the
Marchesa looked full into his face.

"Good!" she said. "Good!"

And a gleam almost of happiness seemed to light her up. She seemed like
one who had been kept in a horrible enchanted castle--for years and
years. Oh, a horrible enchanted castle, with wet walls of emotions and
ponderous chains of feelings and a ghastly atmosphere of must-be. She
felt she had seen through the opening door a crack of sunshine, and
thin, pure, light outside air, outside, beyond this dank and
beastly dungeon of feelings and moral necessity. Ugh!--she shuddered
convulsively at what had been. She looked at her little husband. Chains
of necessity all round him: a little jailor. Yet she was fond of him.
If only he would throw away the castle keys. He was a little gnome. What
did he clutch the castle-keys so tight for?

Aaron looked at her. He knew that they understood one another, he and
she. Without any moral necessity or any other necessity. Outside--they
had got outside the castle of so-called human life. Outside the
horrible, stinking human castle Of life. A bit of true, limpid freedom.
Just a glimpse.

"Charming!" said the Marchese. "Truly charming! But what was it you
played?"

Aaron told him.

"But truly delightful. I say, won't you play for us one of these
Saturdays? And won't you let me take the accompaniment? I should be
charmed, charmed if you would."

"All right," said Aaron.

"Do drink another cocktail," said his hostess.

He did so. And then he rose to leave.

"Will you stay to dinner?" said the Marchesa. "We have two people
coming--two Italian relatives of my husband. But--"

No, Aaron declined to stay to dinner.

"Then won't you come on--let me see--on Wednesday? Do come on Wednesday.
We are alone. And do bring the flute. Come at half-past six, as today,
will you? Yes?"

Aaron promised--and then he found himself in the street. It was
half-past seven. Instead of returning straight home, he crossed the
Ponte Vecchio and walked straight into the crowd. The night was fine
now. He had his overcoat over his arm, and in a sort of trance or
frenzy, whirled away by his ev