The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (12.1897)

Natalie

By Rcn6e dc Coutans

The room was dark, but the door had purposely been left wide
open into the hall, and the furniture and her father’s and
mother’s big bed were dimly visible. Natalie lay snugly curled
upon herself like a soft kitten, in her white bedstead with high
white bars round it, that she might not fall out.

The most beautiful music she had ever heard her mother play
rose from the drawing-room, and she was listening to it in a half-
sleepy, half-wakeful enchantment. Turn—ta turn, ti turn, turn
turn—her mother went over the passage, over and over again.
The phrase was so vehement, so strong, she felt a little afraid ;
yet it pleased her very much. Turn—ta turn, ti turn, turn, turn—

then followed a shower of pearls, rubies, water-drops ; over and
over again her mother played this too, until the liquid, jewelled
notes seemed to ripple from her fingers. Then she went back,
and combined the two passages, and then repeated them many
times. Yet Natalie did not tire of listening, and each time her
ear flew to the opening bar before her mother’s fingers had
returned to it.

Suddenly, poor Natalie was dissolved in tears. The piano now
rose in a phrase so exquisitely sweet, searching, tender, so vibrant
of pitiful love, that this little girl of six was pierced with its

emotion j