Truly a Novel of Love and War

My Rating:  * * * * *

"It was inevitable, perhaps, that at that particular moment the little orchestra was overtaken by nostalgia and chose to play a waltz. It was very queer to see a bowl of fruit, birds, a cello, pierrots, pierrettes, and harlequins intermingling upon the floor, swaying and whirling to the music of a dead empire. But Amalia did not notice, and even Dietrich was forgotten for the moment.

"'How is it, Andrzej,' she asked, 'that music, more than anything else, can so eloquently call up the past?'

"His eyes, vividly green behind the mask that hid so little, locked with hers as the room turned around them.'Perhaps it's because music speaks to the heart, Amalia, and not the mind. The heart is ... unaware of the passage of time.'

"When the music was over, its magic was slow to recede, and Amalia was left with a heart pounding as though she had run a race. Would this be the last time she waltzed with Andrzej?"