Somebody left the music on.
Not loudly, it is coming from another room, or another century. A waltz, faint enough that you will only notice it when you stop reading and wonder what that sound is. The chandeliers are still hanging but nobody has lit them. The mirrors along the wall are tarnished and the velvet drapes have faded to the colour of old wine.
This is two hours of that. Moonlight crossing a floor that was last danced on long enough ago that the dust has settled into patterns nobody will disturb. A music box melody, a distant violin, and a room that was beautiful and still is, in the way that things are beautiful when they have stopped being used for what they were made for.
It was made for the romances that hurt. The ones where the love is real and the ending is not what you wanted.
