salon_, but the girls' room. Being an
American, Madame was almost lavish about fires. And it was a most
un-French room, the most careless little place, where the second-best
piano lived, and the lilacs, when they were taken in out of the cold.
There were sweet old curtains, and a long sofa in front of the fireplace
instead of the traditional armchairs. Anybody's books and bibelots lay
about. I was playing."

"What?" This was important.

"What would a girl play, over twenty years ago, in Paris? In the
_crepuscule_, with the lilacs that _embaument_, as they say there, and
with a sort of panic in her mind? Because, after all, the man to whom
one is engaged is a man whom one knows very slightly."

"Absolutely," said Hugh.

"And I didn't want to leave Paris.... Of course I was playing Chopin
bits, with an ache in my heart to match, that I couldn't bear and was
enjoying to the utmost. What do girls play now? Then all of us had
attacks of Chopin. Madame used to laugh and say, 'I hear the harbour bar
still moaning,' and order that particular girl's favourite dessert. She
spoiled us. And Monsieur would say something about _si jeunesse savait_.
He was a nice old man, not very successful; his colleagues patronized
him. Oh yes he was obvious!

"And then Melanie opened the door and announced, '_Monsieur, le cousin
de Mademoiselle_.' I don't know what made her do it except a general
wish to be kind. She remembered from the other night, and, besides, she
hated to attempt English names; she made salmi of them."

Hugh had ceased to hold her eyes long ago. They looked into the window's
square of light. He had no wish to intrude his presence. She was finding
it natural to tell him, just as he had acknowledged her right to explore
the intimate places of his soul. Things simply happened that way
sometimes, and one was humbly thankful.

"'Go on,' he said. 'Don't stop.' He sat in a corner of the sofa, and for
a while the impetus of my start carried me on. Then the bottom dropped
out of Chopin. I went over and sat in the other corner. It was a long
sofa; it felt as long as the world.

"Do you remember that heart-breakingly beautiful voice of his that could
make you feel anything he was feeling? It was like magic. He said at
last:

"'So you are going home to be married?'

"I nodded.

"'Betty,' he said, 'are you happy, quite happy, about--everything?'

"'Oh yes!' I said. 'Oh yes, Professor Fowler!' The curious thing about
it was