"Cather, Willa - Alexander's Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

Alexander brought a chair for her,
but she shook her head.

"No, dear, thank you. I only came in to
see whether you and Professor Wilson were
quite comfortable. I am going down to the
music-room."

"Why not practice here? Wilson and I are
growing very dull. We are tired of talk."

"Yes, I beg you, Mrs. Alexander,"
Wilson began, but he got no further.

"Why, certainly, if you won't find me
too noisy. I am working on the Schumann
`Carnival,' and, though I don't practice a
great many hours, I am very methodical,"
Mrs. Alexander explained, as she crossed to
an upright piano that stood at the back of
the room, near the windows.

Wilson followed, and, having seen her seated,
dropped into a chair behind her. She played
brilliantly and with great musical feeling.
Wilson could not imagine her permitting
herself to do anything badly, but he was
surprised at the cleanness of her execution.
He wondered how a woman with so many
duties had managed to keep herself up to a
standard really professional. It must take
a great deal of time, certainly, and Bartley
must take a great deal of time. Wilson reflected
that he had never before known a woman who
had been able, for any considerable while,
to support both a personal and an
intellectual passion. Sitting behind her,
he watched her with perplexed admiration,
shading his eyes with his hand. In her dinner dress
she looked even younger than in street clothes,
and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency,
she seemed to him strangely alert and vibrating,
as if in her, too, there were something
never altogether at rest. He felt
that he knew pretty much what she
demanded in people and what she demanded
from life, and he wondered how she squared
Bartley. After ten years she must know him;
and however one took him, however much
one admired him, one had to admit that he