had begun without heeding her answer, and she stood motionless again,
marvelling at the wonderful indifference to all external circumstance
which was now evinced by his complete absorption in the music before
him.

'Why do you play such saddening chords?' she said, when he next paused.

'H'm--because I like them, I suppose,' said he lightly. 'Don't you like
sad impressions sometimes?'

'Yes, sometimes, perhaps.'

'When you are full of trouble.'

'Yes.'

'Well, why shouldn't I when I am full of trouble?'

'Are you troubled?'

'I am troubled.' He said this thoughtfully and abruptly--so abruptly
that she did not push the dialogue further.

He now played more powerfully. Cytherea had never heard music in the
completeness of full orchestral power, and the tones of the organ, which
reverberated with considerable effect in the comparatively small space
of the room, heightened by the elemental strife of light and sound
outside, moved her to a degree out of proportion to the actual power
of the mere notes, practised as was the hand that produced them.
The varying strains--now loud, now soft; simple, complicated, weird,
touching, grand, boisterous, subdued; each phase distinct, yet
modulating into the next with a graceful and easy flow--shook and bent
her to themselves, as a gushing brook shakes and bends a shadow cast
across its surface. The power of the music did not show itself so much
by attracting her attention to the subject of the piece, as by taking
up and developing as its libretto the poem of her own life and soul,
shifting her deeds and intentions from the hands of her judgment and
holding them in its own.

She was swayed into emotional opinions concerning the strange man before
her; new impulses of thought came with new harmonies, and entered into
her with a gnawing thrill. A dreadful flash of lightning then, and the
thunder close upon it. She found herself involuntarily shrinking up
beside him, and looking with parted lips at his face.

He turned his eyes and saw her emotion, which greatly increased the
ideal element in her expressive face. She was in the state in which
woman's instinct to conceal has lost its power over her impulse to tell;
and he saw it. Bending his handsome face over her till his lips almost
touched her ear, he murmured, without breaking the harmonies--

'Do you very much like this piece?'

'Very much indeed,' she said.

'I could see you were affected by it. I will copy it for yo