They shared a communion so perfect, an ecstasy so deep that it resembled death. When they recovered from the swoon, Alexis laid his head upon Anne's shoulder like a weary child. "I want to sleep with my head upon your breast. I want to lie beside you all night, just as if we were married, just as if I had the right," he sobbed. Anne soothed him, as a woman soothes the child at her breast, and presently he slept. But she lay awake beside him for a long time, staring out into the moonlit night, savoring her love, her compassion, her sacrifice. CHAPTER XX OFFERINGS TO THE GOD OF GENIUS The holiday season parted the lovers temporarily. Alexis' Christmas gift, a carved emerald, about her neck, like a symbol of slavery, Anne went to Virginia to visit her aunt. She was gone two weeks and the change did her good. An invalid, her aunt saw almost no one, and the blessed sunny monotony of the days fell like balm upon Anne's irked spirit. Wrapped in rugs, for the air was keen, she sat with the old lady in the frost-touched garden and read aloud to her from gentle, time-worn books, which they both loved. Stevenson and Thackeray, and once or twice Jane Austen. Or, if they felt particularly devilish, Bourget, or even Prévost. Well-bred salacities, as mild and unfleshly as a Watteau screen. Meanwhile, Anne's soul basked in the radiant peace. The winter had not proved an easy one, so far, and as the time approached for Alexis' concert, Anne welcomed his increased absorption. His accompanist, Paul Leon, spent the greater part of the week at the house in Long Island, leaving Saturdays and Sundays as the only free days, and the greater part of these were spent either in practicing, or in talking over with Anne the programs for his coming season. Following his recital in Carnegie Hall, at the end of January, there were to be several appearances with different orchestras, including the Philharmonic. After that the projected tour of the principal cities would come. All this required a very careful and varied choice of program. And Alexis was both painstaking and meticulous. As he was temperamental as well, it naturally followed that he often changed his mind. One day, a Tchaikowsky Concerto would obsess him to the point of rapture. The next he would develop a Beethoven complex. Some waltz of Wienawski, a serenade of Kreisler would fling him into Paradise for a week. The Serenade Melancolique rode him for days like a subconscious sorrow. He would get out of bed, and still half asleep, take out his violin and play it until exhaustion overcame him. "It is the song of a fallen angel," he cried one night, tears falling down his working face. "The agony of lost glory, the utter hopelessness are all there."