own on her recumbent in the
bracken.

"But only in a stupid schoolgirly way?" he gasped.

"Yes, I suppose it was," Stella paused. "But it was fearfully thrilling
all the same--especially in duets."

"Duets?"

"I used to read ahead, and watch where our hands would come together,
and then the notes used to get quite slippery with excitement."

"Look here," Michael demanded, drawing himself up, "are you trying to be
funny?"

"No," Stella declared, rising to confront Michael. "He was one of my
masters. He was only about thirty, and he was killed in Switzerland by
an avalanche."

Michael was staggered by the confession of this shocking and precocious
child, as one after another his chimeras rose up to leer at him
triumphantly.

"And did he make love to you? Did he try to kiss you?" Michael choked
out.

"Oh, no," said Stella. "That would have spoilt it all."

Michael sighed under a faint lightening of his load, and Stella came up
to him engagingly to slip her arm into his.

"Don't be angry with me, Michael, because I have wanted so dreadfully to
be great friends with you and tell you all my secrets. I want to tell
you what I think about when I'm playing; and, Michael, you oughtn't to
be angry with me, because you were simply just made to be told secrets.
That's why I played so well last night. I was telling you a secret all
the time."

"Do you know what it is, Stella?" said Michael, with a certain awe in
his voice. "I believe our father is in an asylum, and I believe you and
I are both mad--not raving mad, of course--but slightly mad."

"All geniuses are," said Stella earnestly.

"But we aren't geniuses."

"I am," murmured Stella in a strangely quiet little voice that sounded
in Michael's ears like the song of a furtive melodious bird.

"Are you?" he whispered, half frightened by this assertion, delivered
under huge overarching trees in the burning silence of the forest. "Who
told you so?"

"I told myself so. And when I tell myself something very solemnly, I
can't be anything but myself, and I must be speaking the truth."

"But even if you're a genius--and I suppose you might be--I'm not a
genius. I'm clever, but I'm not a genius."

"No, but you're the nearest person to being me, and if you're not a
genius, I think you can understand. Oh, Michael," Stella cried, clasping
his arm to her heart, "you do understand, because you never laughed
when I told you I was a genius. I've told lots of girl-friends,