Henry Handel Richardson

“ I believe now, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t care whether I ever come to anything or not. Of course, I should rather have been a success—we all would!—but caring for you has swallowed up the ridiculous notions I once had. For your sake—it’s you I torment myself about. WHAT is to become of us?”
“If that’s all, Maurice! Something will turn up, I’m sure it will. Have a little patience, and faith in luck . . . or fate . . . or whatever you like to call it.”
“That’s a woman’s way of looking at things.” ”

“ Having failed, through over-care, in the rounding of a turn, he resolved to let things go as they would, and his thoughts wander at will. The movements of the trio succeeded one another; the VARIATIONS ceased, and were followed by the crisp gaiety of the MINUET. The lights above his head were reflected in the shining ebony of the piano; regularly, every moment or two, he was struck by the appearance of Schwarz’s broad, fat hand, which crossed his range of vision to turn a leaf ”

“ Her face was so unhappy that it seerned to have grown years older. “Love is something quite different. It takes everything just as it is. You have never reaily loved me.”.
“I have never really loved you?”
He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, and with his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slipping from under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she had said, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yards from him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life ”

“ However despondent I get about myself? For you are all I have, Louise—in the whole world. Yes, I may as well confess it to you, to-night was a failure—not a noisy, open one but all the same, it’s no use calling it anything else. ”

“ The real something that makes the musician—even the genuinely musical outsider—is wanting in me. I’ve learnt to see that, by degrees, though I don’t know in the least what it is.—But even suppose I were mistaken—who could tell me that I was? One’s friends are only too glad to avoid giving a downright opinion, and then, too, which of them would one care to trust? I believe in the end I shall go straight to Schwarz, and get him to tell me what he thinks of me—whether I’m making a fool of myself or not.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Louise said quickly. ”

“ You don’t want it even to exist. You want everything to belong to you. You don’t care for me well enough to be interested in that side of my life which has nothing to do with you. Your love isn’t strong enough for that. ”

“ Instead, however, of smoothing things over, he was impelled, by an unconquerable impulse, to disclose himself still further. “Besides, that’s not all,” he said, and avoided her eyes. “There’s something else, and I may just as well make a clean breast of it. It’s not only that the future is every bit as shadowy to-night as it has always been: I haven’t advanced it by an inch. But I feel to-night that if I could have been what I once hoped to be—no, how shall I put it? ”

“ A camelia is a foolish flower; like a blind man’s face—the chief thing is wanting. But then, of course, the smell must remind one of pleasant things. It’s strange, isn’t it, how much association has to do with pleasure?—or pain. Some things affect me so strongly that they make me wretched. ”

“ Well, to-night I seem to know. If I were not such an out-and-out mediocrity, if I had really been able to achieve something, you would care for me—yes, that’s it!—as you can’t possibly care now. You would have to; you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. ”

“ As he stood there, Madeleine entered by the street-door.
“Is that you?” she asked, in the ironical tone she now habitually used to him. “You look just as if you were posing for the John in a Rubens Crucifixion.—Feel shaky? No? You ought to, you know. One plays all the better for it.—Well, good luck to you! I’ll hold my thumbs.”
He went along the passage to the little green-room, at the heels of his string-players. On seeing them go by, it had occurred to him that he might draw their attention to a passage in the VARIATIONS, with which he had not been satisfied at rehearsal that day. ”

“ Towards seven o’clock the following evening, Maurice loitered about the vestibule of the Conservatorium. In spite of his attempt to time himself, he had arrived too early, and his predecessor on the programme had still to play two movements of a sonata by Beethoven. ”

“ With his music in his hand, he turned to Schwarz, to learn what success he had had, from the master’s face. According to custom, Schwarz shook hands with him; he also nodded. but he did not smile. He was, however, in a hurry; the old: white-haired director had left his seat, and stood waiting to speak to him. Both ‘cellist and violinist had vanished on the instant; the audience, eager as ever at the end of a concert to shake off an imposed restraint, had risen while Maurice still played the final notes ”