And yet even the fact of her retaining
it is open to two interpretations, and Cristich testified for her. Maurice
Cristich! Madame Romanoff! the renowned Romanoff, Maurice Cristich! Have I
been pusillanimous, prudent or merely cruel? For the life of me I cannot
say!
SOUVENIRS OF AN EGOIST
Eheu fugaces! How that air carries me back, that air ground away so
unmercifully, _sans_ tune, _sans_ time on a hopelessly discordant
barrel-organ, right underneath my window. It is being bitterly execrated, I
know, by the literary gentleman who lives in chambers above me, and by the
convivial gentleman who has a dinner party underneath. It has certainly
made it impossible for me to continue the passage in my new Fugue in A
minor, which was being transferred so flowingly from my own brain on to the
score when it interrupted me. But for all that, I have a shrewd suspicion
that I shall bear its unmusical torture as long as it lasts, and eventually
send away the frowsy foreigner, who no doubt is playing it, happy with a
fairly large coin.
Yes: for the sake of old times, for the old emotion's sake--for Ninette's
sake, I put up with it, not altogether sorry for the recollections it has
aroused.
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