In the middle of a phrase the music stopped.

“A vous le tour!” they heard LaChaise say to Novelli.  “Je ne suis pas assez pianiste.  Maintenant!  Recommencons, n’est-ce-pas?”

The song resumed.  March’s frame stiffened.

“Oh night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the
  breakers? 
 What is that little black thing I see there in the white?”

“Now then,” March whispered.  “Quicker!  My God, can’t they pick it up?” Like an echo came LaChaise’s “Plus vite! Stringendo, jusque au bout!” and with a gasp the composer greeted the quickened tempo.  Then as the song swept to its first tempestuous climax he clutched Mary’s arm.  “That’s it,” he cried.  “Can’t you see that’s it?”

“Loud! loud! loud! 
 Loud I call to you, my love! 
 High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,
 Surely you must know who is here, is here,
 You must know who I am, my love.”

He let go her arm.  The song went on.

“Low-hanging moon! 
 What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? 
 O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! 
 Oh moon, do not keep me from her any longer.”

From there, without interruption it swept along to the end.

It was during the ecstatic pianissimo just before the final section that their hands clasped.  Which of them first sought the contact neither of them knew but they sat linked like that, tingling, breathless during the lines:—­

“... somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
 So faint I must be still, be still to listen,
 But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to
   me.”

On the last “Hither, my love!  Here I am!  Here!” the clasp tightened, convulsively.  But it was not until the circuit was broken that the spark really leaped across the gap.

There was no applause in the other room when the song ended for the second time, but it won a clear half minute of breathless silence before the eddies of talk began again.  During that tight-stretched moment the pair upon the settee, their hands just unclasped, sat motionless, fully aware of each other for the first time, almost unendurably aware, thrilling with the just-arrived sense of the amazing intimacy of the experience they had shared.  Neither of them was innocent but neither had ever known so complete a fusion of his identity with another as this which the spell of his music had produced.

They sat side by side but not very close, not so close that there was contact anywhere between them and neither made any move to resume it.  Both were trembling uncontrollably and each knew that the other was.

The hum of talk in the other room rose louder and finally became articulate in Charlotte Avery’s crisp, “Good night, my dear Paula, we’ve had a most interesting evening.  I shall hope to hear more of your discovery.  And see him too sometime if you make up your mind to exhibit him.”