usic, the
accumulations of her visit to London. She stood up beside the piano, her
hair gleaming in the shadow of the drawing-room, her white brow hanging
forward over her violin as she peered her way through the music, her
whole soul absorbed in what she was doing. Langham passed unnoticed.

What astonishing playing! Why had no one warned him of the presence of
such a gift in this dazzling, prickly, unripe creature? He sat down
against the wall of the house, as close as possible, but out of sight,
and listened. All the romance of his spoilt and solitary life had come
to him so far through music, and through such music as this! For she was
playing Wagner, Brahms, and Rubinstein, interpreting all those
passionate voices of the subtlest moderns, through which the heart of
our own day has expressed itself even more freely and exactly than
through the voice of literature. Hans Sachs' immortal song, echoes from
the love duets in 'Tristan und Isolde,' fragments from a wild and alien
dance-music, they rippled over him in a warm intoxicating stream of
sound, stirring association after association, and rousing from sleep a
hundred bygone moods of feeling.

What magic and mastery in the girl's touch! What power of divination,
and of rendering! Ah! she too was floating in passion and romance, but
of a different sort altogether from the conscious reflected product of
the man's nature. She was not thinking of the past, but of the future;
she was weaving her story that was to be into the flying notes, playing
to the unknown of her Whindale dreams, the strong ardent
unknown,--'insufferable, if he pleases, to all the world besides, but to
_me_ heaven!' She had caught no breath yet of his coming, but her heart
was ready for him.

Suddenly, as she put down her violin, the French window opened, and
Langham stood before her. She looked at him with a quick stiffening of
the face which a minute before had been all quivering and relaxed, and
his instant perception of it chilled the impulse which had brought him
there.

He said something _banal_ about his enjoyment, something totally
different from what he had meant to say. The moment presented itself,
but he could not seize it or her.

'I had no notion you cared for music,' she said carelessly, as she shut
the piano, and then she went away.

Langham felt a strange fierce pang of disappointment. What had he meant
to do or say? Idiot! What common ground was there between him and any
suc