ould do.

"Who is she?" he asked the vicar afterwards.

"Cousin of one of my parishioners. I do not consider her choice of a
piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal
that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if
anything, disturbs."

"Introduce me."

"She will be delighted. She and Miss Bartlett are full of the praises of
your sermon."

"My sermon?" cried Mr. Beebe. "Why ever did she listen to it?"

When he was introduced he understood why, for Miss Honeychurch,
disjoined from her music stool, was only a young lady with a quantity of
dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going to
concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee and
meringues. He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But before
he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now
made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily
towards him:

"If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very
exciting both for us and for her."

Lucy at once re-entered daily life.

"Oh, what a funny thing! Some one said just the same to mother, and she
said she trusted I should never live a duet."

"Doesn't Mrs. Honeychurch like music?"

"She doesn't mind it. But she doesn't like one to get excited over
anything; she thinks I am silly about it. She thinks--I can't make
out. Once, you know, I said that I liked my own playing better than any
one's. She has never got over it. Of course, I didn't mean that I played
well; I only meant--"

"Of course," said he, wondering why she bothered to explain.

"Music--" said Lucy, as if attempting some generality. She could not
complete it, and looked out absently upon Italy in the wet. The whole
life of the South was disorganized, and the most graceful nation in
Europe had turned into formless lumps of clothes.

The street and the river were dirty yellow, the bridge was dirty grey,
and the hills were dirty purple. Somewhere in their folds were concealed
Miss Lavish and Miss Bartlett, who had chosen this afternoon to visit
the Torre del Gallo.

"What about music?" said Mr. Beebe.

"Poor Charlotte will be sopped," was Lucy's reply.

The expedition was typical of Miss Bartlett, who would return cold,
tired, hungry, and angelic, with a ruined skirt, a pulpy Baedeker, and
a tickling cough in her throat. On another day, when the whole world was
singing and the air