repulsive cases, with a pleasant elaboration of detail which used to
exasperate Christophe. Then he would throw his napkin on the table and
get up, making faces of disgust which simply delighted the teller. Braun
would stop at once, and soothe his friend and laugh. At the next meal he
would begin again. His hospital pleasantries seemed to have the power to
enliven the impassive Anna. She would break her silence with a sudden
nervous laugh, which was something animal in quality. Perhaps she felt
no less disgust than Christophe at the things that made her laugh.

In the afternoon Christophe had very few pupils. Then, as a rule, he
would stay at home with Anna, while the doctor went out. They never saw
each other. They used to go about their separate business. At first
Braun had begged Christophe to give his wife a few lessons on the piano:
she was, he said, an excellent musician. Christophe asked Anna to play
him something. She did not need to be pressed, although she disliked
doing it: but she did it with her usual ungraciousness: she played
mechanically, with an incredible lack of sensibility: each note was like
another: there was no sort of rhythm or expression: when she had to turn
the page she stopped short in the middle of a bar, made no haste about
it, and went on with the next note. Christophe was so exasperated by it
that he was hard put to it to keep himself from making an insulting
remark: he could not help going out of the room before she had finished.
She was not put out, but went on imperturbably to the very last note,
and seemed to be neither hurt nor indignant at his rudeness: she hardly
seemed to have noticed it. But the matter of music was never again
mentioned between them. Sometimes in the afternoons when Christophe was
out and returned unexpectedly, he would find Anna practising the piano,
with icy, dull tenacity, going over and over one passage fifty times,
and never by any chance showing the least animation. She never played when
she knew that Christophe was at home. She devoted all the time that