The young pianist hinted that more music would be
agreeable, but there was no response. He was quite alone with
Constantia, and they talked of Poland's tone-poet. She knew much more of
Chopin than he did, and she recited Mickiewicz's patriotic poems with
incomparable verve.
"Do you believe in heredity?" he cried, as the father entered with the
tea. "Do you believe that your love of Chopin is inherited? Chopin
composed that wonderful slow movement of the F minor concerto because of
his love for your grandmother. How I wish I could have seen her, heard
her."
The girl, without answering him, detached from her neck a large brooch
and chain. Davos took it and amazedly compared the portrait with the
living woman.
"You _are_ Constantia Gladowska." She smiled.
"Her love of Chopin--she must have loved her youthful adorer--has been
transmitted to you. Oh, please play me that movement again, the one
Rubinstein called 'the night wind sweeping over the churchyard graves.'"
Constantia blushed so deeply that he knew he had offended her. She had
for him something of the pathos of old dance music--its stately
sweetness, its measured rhythms.
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