For almost a week they had been in Schwansee, rigidly conforming to the covenant of restraint which, as a condition of her coming, she had obliged him to accept. Throughout this horrid stalemate of emotion, in a frantic effort to sway her, he had made simplicity and calm the order of the day. Their too theatrical welcome by Arturo and Elena had been quickly suppressed, staidness imposed, and plain meals commanded, served with an absence of formality. Straining to demonstrate the desirability of his picturesque landscape, he took her walking every afternoon in the crisp, tingling air: excursions, conducted mainly in silence, which brought them into the white foothills of the Alps, seen above as soaring pinnacles made rosy by the rising and setting of the sun. In the evenings, seated in the library on either side of the crackling log fire, tired less from their long outings than from persistent strain, he gave her a programme of his records – selecting mainly Handel, Bach, Mozart – which, rising from time, to time, he played upon the stereophonic radiogram, its varnished mahogany skilfully concealed in his lacquer Coromandel cabinet.
