Day was breaking, and in all the passion and churchiness of Gounod, the
student calls for death, the echoes of human happiness rustling through
the background like the scything sound of harvesting.
Lilly could scarcely breathe for the poignancy of sensation. She was all
throat. Faust's opening greeting to the dawn, his challenge to
happiness, pierced her. She sat forward on her chair, anticipating the
lyrical vision of Marguerite, her hands clasped over the handle of her
wet umbrella, and her knees crowded up unconsciously about its dampness.
She bought the libretto, humming down into it between acts and leaping
ahead to verify her memory of the score.
Poor Lilly, it is doubtful if she was by endowment more than a lovely
melomaniac doomed never to emerge from her musical primaries. A mere
tonal accord could assail her nostrils like a perfume set to music. And
yet her quick ear, though, was not exact. Her capacity for fine vocal
distinctions in her own singing had been distinctly limited, and a note
landing just this side of itself could drop down into her state of
ecstatic coma with hardly a plop.
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