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Despite the inferiority of her instrument the performer tried with some success to suggest the appropriate orchestral effects. She rendered with brilliant precision the violin scales in the great crescendo. She played with fastidious reverence, lingering faithfully over every significant detail of the structure, humbly and ceremoniously exhibiting it, like a priest elevating the sacred host. What story did the music tell? It told of two forces, two enraptured lovers reaching out toward each other in suffering and ecstasy and embracing in a convulsive mad desire for eternity, for the absolute…The prelude blazed to its consummation and died down. She stopped at the point where the curtain parts and continued to gaze silently at the music.

A writer who had for a few weeks been passing his time in Einfried – an odd fish with a name reminiscent of some kind of precious stone – positively changed color when she passed him in the corridor; he stopped short and was still standing as if rooted to the spot long after she had disappeared.