Read it through once

“But it cannot be. That fine air is difficult to breathe long, and life, with its rounds of custom and duty, recalls us. So we descend with the musician, through varying harmonies and sliding modulations. . .deadening the poignancy of the minor third in the more satisfying reassuring chord of the dominant ninth, which again finds its rest on the key-note--C major-- the common chord, so sober and uninteresting that it well symbolizes the common level of life, the prosaic key-note to which unfortunately most of our lives are set.