morning if you have a conscience,' she said drily; 'we
murdered one or two passages in fine style.'

He looked at her, startled. 'But I go by the morning train!' There was
an instant's silence. Then the violin case shut with a snap.

'I thought it was to be Saturday,' she said abruptly.

'No,' he answered with a sigh, 'it was always Friday. There is a meeting
in London I must get to to-morrow afternoon.'

'Then we shan't finish these Hungarian duets,' she said slowly, turning
away from him to collect some music on the piano.

Suddenly a sense of the difference between the week behind him, with all
its ups and downs, its quarrels, its _ennuis_, its moments of delightful
intimity, of artistic freedom and pleasure, and those threadbare
monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow, awoke in
him a mad inconsequent sting of disgust, of self-pity.

'No, we shall finish nothing,' he said in a voice which only she could
hear, his hands lying on the keys; 'there are some whose destiny it is
never to finish--never to have enough--to leave the feast on the table,
and all the edges of life ragged!'

Her lips trembled. They were far away, in the vast room, from the group
Lady Charlotte was lecturing. Her nerves were all unsteady with music
and feeling, and the face looking down on him had grown pale.

'We make our own destiny,' she said impatiently. '_We_ choose. It is all
our own doing. Perhaps destiny begins things--friendship, for instance;
but afterwards it is absurd to talk of anything but ourselves. We keep
our friends, our chances, our--our joys,' she went on hurriedly, trying
desperately to generalise, 'or we throw them away wilfully, because we
choose.'

Their eyes were riveted on each other.

'Not wilfully,' he said under his breath. 'But--no matter. May I take
you at your word, Miss Leyburn? Wretched shirker that I am, whom even
Robert's charity despairs of: have I made a friend? Can I keep her?'

Extraordinary spell of the dark effeminate face--of its rare smile! The
girl forgot all pride, all discretion. 'Try,' she whispered, and as his
hand, stretching along the keyboard, instinctively felt for hers, for
one instant--and another, and another--she gave it to him.

* * * * *

'Albert, come here!' exclaimed Lady Charlotte, beckoning to her husband;
and Albert, though with a bad grace, obeyed. 'Just go and ask that girl
to come and talk to me, will you? Why on ea