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When Grazia closed her eyes, she could hear within herself more than one disturbing voice, of a tone familiar to her. But in her healthy soul even the dissonances were blended to form a profound, soft music, under the guiding hand of her harmonious reason. Unhappily it is not within our power to transmit the best of our blood to the creatures of our blood.
On the wall there was a cast of the mask of Beethoven, and near the bed, in a cheap frame, photographs of his mother and Olivier. On the dressing-table was another photograph: Grazia herself as a child of fifteen. He had found it in her album in Rome, and had stolen it. He confessed it, and asked her to forgive him. She looked at the face, and said: "Can you recognize me in it?"
Grazia was the first to make an effort to break the silence. She told him where she lived, and asked him where he was staying. Question and answer were mechanical, and they hardly listened, heard later, when their hands had parted: they were absorbed in gazing at each other. The children came back to her. She introduced them.
Every one of thy wrinkles is to me as music from the past...." The charm of these old people, who, after the long vigil of life, spent side by side, go side by side to sleep in the peace of the night! To see them was both sweet and profitable and sorrowful for Christophe. Oh! How lovely had life and death been thus!... When he next saw Grazia, he could not help telling her of his visit.
Every hour that they could steal in this way was the more precious to them as they could never be sure of enjoying it to the end. How near they felt to each other! Why could they not always be so!... One day Grazia herself confessed to her regret. Christophe took her hand. "Yes. Why?" he asked. "You know why, my dear," she said, with a miserable smile. Christophe knew.
One evening, when they were walking together in the garden, a gentle rain came on, and Colette, tenderly, though coquettishly, offered Grazia the shelter of her cloak: Grazia, for whom, a few weeks before, it would have been happiness ineffable to be held close to her beloved cousin, moved away coldly, and walked on in silence at a distance of some yards.
She knew the meaning of the message with which Grazia had charged her as she lay dying, and of the ring which was now on Christophe's hand. So there existed hidden ties between her and Christophe, ties which she did not need to understand, to feel them in their complexity.
It was very sweet to him to consult her about his life, for it gave him the illusion that she shared it. This time she gave him a shock of disillusion. She made him explain the whole matter to her, and advised him to accept. He was very hurt, and saw in her advice the proof of her indifference. Probably Grazia was sorry to give him such advice. But why did Christophe ask her for it?
And sometimes, in the evening, when he left her with his heart big with love so that he could not wait until the morrow, he would write: "Liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe Grazia...." Their tranquillity lasted for months. They thought it would last forever. The boy seemed to have forgotten them: his attention was distracted by other things.
His modulations were at times rather bold, at times rather comical; they would have given a connoisseur great satisfaction, and have made a German furiously indignant. He was a Russian tenore di grazia, tenor leger.
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