Beyond was a spacious room, in which warm light shone over a gleaming piano. Two pale-blue armchairs sat on either side, as if awaiting the piano’s song, and the walls were lined with bookshelves full of clothbound books. Even the ceiling was ornamented with plaster flowers, and the piano had its own lovely rug to stand upon. Most strange of all was that no one was in the room. All that beauty sat unattended. The piano alone received the wasteful flood of electric light, light someone somewhere had worked to produce. One saw the hours of a stranger’s life pouring uselessly over the silent
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