She received a note from Brantome, informing her that if she went to a
certain orchestral concert she would hear a piece that David Verne had
written at the height of his promise.
To Lilla it was a new voice in the world of music, ultra-modern, yet
incorrigibly melodic, giving utterance to immemorial emotions with
great nobility. Those passages of almost intolerable aspiration were
underlaid with dissonant harmonies, as if hell itself had poured all
its allurements into tone, to engulf the theme that was struggling to
soar upward. It became a terrific combat, in which beauty was to be
recognized in sublimated form, striving to end its likeness to another
beauty, seductive in a different, monstrous way, yet all too similar.
It was a battle translated into sound, so enlarged and enriched by the
imagination of the composer that a universe, instead of one soul,
seemed to be involved in it.
Suddenly in the midst of a piercing blare of brass there was a moment
of chaos; then the theme, as if soaring free, lost itself in
extraordinary altitudes, borne up by a whirl of violin notes. A crash
of cymbals ended everything.
When she roused herself at last, Lilla perceived that the concert hall
was empty except for the ushers who were turning up the seats.