THE SONG OF THE LARK
his glance, then turned to the piano again. Harsanyi was never quite sure where the light came from when her face suddenly flashed out at him in that way. Her eyes were too small to account for it, though they glittered like green ice in the sun. At such moments her hair was yellower, her skin whiter, her cheeks pinker, as if a lamp had suddenly been turned up inside of her. She went at the song again:
"Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin."
A kind of happiness vibrated in her voice. Harsanyi noticed how much and how unhesitatingly she changed her delivery of the whole song, the first part as well as the last. He had often noticed that she could not think a thing out in passages. Until she saw it as a whole, she wandered like a blind man surrounded by torments. After she once had her "revelation," after she got the idea that to her—not always to him—explained everything, then she went forward rapidly. But she was not always easy to help. She was sometimes impervious to suggestion; she would stare at him as if she were deaf and ignore everything he told her to do. Then, all at once, something would happen in her brain and she would begin to do all that he had been for weeks telling her to do, without realizing that he had ever told her.
To-night Thea forgot Harsanyi and his finger. She finished the song only to begin it with fresh enthusiasm.
"Und das hat mit ihrem singen
Die Lorelei gethan."
She sat there singing it until the darkening room was so flooded with it that Harsanyi threw open a window.
"You really must stop it, Miss Kronborg. I shan't be able to get it out of my head to-night."
Thea laughed tolerantly as she began to gather up her music. "Why, I thought you had gone, Mr. Harsanyi. I like that song."
191
