bt that was
true. One may travel far perhaps in mind and in feeling without being
self-consciously aware of it. But when one was aware, when one knew,
it must surely be possible to stop. He had made to her a tremendous
suggestion. She could refuse to entertain it. And when she refused,
if she did refuse, what would happen? What would he say, do, when he
realized her determination? How would he take a determined refusal? She
could not imagine. But she knew that she could not imagine Arabian ever
yielding his will to hers in any big matter which would seriously upset
his life.

"Now, shall I sing to you?" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

"Yes, please do," she answered, looking away from him into the fire.

"You know how I sing. I am not a musician of cultivation, but I have
music in me. I have always had it. I have always sung, even as a boy.
It is natural to me. But I have been very idle in my life. I have never
been able to work, alas!"

She looked at him again. Always he was playing softly, improvising.

"Have you really never done any work?"

"Never. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have always had enough money to be
idle."

"He's not poor!" she thought.

And then she felt glad, suddenly remembering how rich she was now, since
the death of her father.

He said nothing more, but played a short prelude and began to sing in
his small, but warm, tenor voice. And, sitting there by the fire, she
watched him while he sang, and wondered again, as she had wondered in
the studio, at the musical sense that was in him and that could show
itself so easily and completely, without apparently any strong effort.
The fascination she felt in him filled all his music, and appealed not
only to her senses but to her musical understanding. She had a genuine
passion for the right in all the arts, for the inevitable word in
literature, the inevitable touch of colour that lights up a painting,
fusing the whole into harmony, the inevitable emotional colouring of a
musical phrase, the slackening or quickening of time, which make a song
exactly what it should be. And to that passion he was able to appeal
with his gift. He sang two Italian songs, and she felt Italy in them.
Then he sang in French, and finally in Spanish--guitar songs. And
presently she gave herself entirely to him as a singer. He had
temperament, and she loved that. It meant, perhaps, too much to her.
That, no doubt, was what drew her to him more surely than his remarkable