"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

and irritate him. He responded to it almost by reflex, refusing to admit to himself his sudden enormous
happiness: "A woman without a tongue! By the gods! Her sting is drawn!" He shook her by the
shoulders, roughly, as though to punish this fault in her that had drawn the familiar acid to his mouth.

Her arms moved up, cross-fashioned, and her hands covered his. She smiled, and a harp-arpeggio
seemed to wing across his mind, and the tones rearranged themselves into words, like images on water
suddenly smooth:

"Hello again, darling. Thanks for being glad to see me."

Something in him collapsed. His arms dropped and he turned his head away. "It's no good, Anna. Why'd
you come back? Everything's falling apart. Even our ballet. Martha bought out our prima."

Again that lilting cascade of tones in his brain: "I know, dear, but it doesn't matter. I'll sub beautifully for
La Tanid. I know the part perfectly. And I know the Nightingale's death song, too."

"Hah!" he laughed harshly, annoyed at his exhibition of discouragement and her ready sympathy. He
stretched his right leg into a mocking pointe tendue. "Marvelous! You have the exact amount of drab
clumsiness that we need in a Nightingale. And as for the death song, why of course you and you alone
know how that ugly little bird feels when"тАФhis eyes were fixed on her mouth in sudden, startled
suspicion, and he finished the rest of the sentence inattentively, with no real awareness of its
meaningтАФ"when she dies on the thorn."

As he waited, the melody formed, vanished, and reformed and resolved into the strangest thing he had
ever known: "What you are thinking is true. My lips do not move. I cannot talk. I've forgotten how, just
as we both forgot how to read and write. But even the plainest nightingale can sing, and make the white
rose red."

This was Anna transfigured. Three weeks ago he had turned his back and left a diffident disciple to an
uncertain fate. Confronting him now was this dark angel bearing on her face the luminous stamp of death.
In some manner that he might never learn, the gods had touched her heart and body, and she had borne
them straightway to him.

He stood, musing in alternate wonder and scorn. The old urge to jeer at her suddenly rose in his gorge.
His lips contorted, then gradually relaxed, as an indescribable elation began to grow within him.

He could thwart Martha yet!

He leaped to the table and shouted: "Your attention, friends! In case you didn't get all this, we've found a
ballerina! The curtain rises tonight on our premiere performance, as scheduled!"

Over the clapping and cheering, Dorran, the orchestra conductor, shouted: "Did I understand that Dr.
van Tuyl has finished the Nightingale's death song? We'll have to omit that tonight, won't we? No chance
to rehearse..."

Jacques looked down at Anna for a moment. His eyes were very thoughtful when he replied: "She says it
won't be omitted. What I mean is, keep that thirty-eight rest sequence in the death scene. Yes, do that,
and we shall see...what we shall seeтАж"

"Thirty-eight rests as presently scored, then?"