n comedy always being played around her brought the smile to her
pale face.

Presently she glanced at the tiny clock on the mantelshelf, and, laying
the coat aside, put the kettle on the fire, and got ready for tea; for
Dick would soon be home from the great engineering works on the other
side of the water, and he liked his tea "to meet him on the stairs."

As she was cutting the bread for the toast there came a knock at the
door, and in answer to her "Come in!" the door was opened halfway, and a
head appeared around it.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Lorton. Lorton not in? I thought I heard his
step," said a man's voice, but one almost as soft as a woman's.

Nell scarcely looked up from her task; the tenants of Beaumont Buildings
are sociable, and their visits to one another were not limited to the
fashionable hours. For instance, the borrowing and returning of a
saucepan or a sewing machine, or some lump sugar, went on all day, and
sometimes late into the night; and the borrower or lender often granted
or accepted a loan without stopping the occupation which he or she
happened to be engaged in at the entrance of the other party.

"Not yet. It is scarcely his time, Mr. Falconer. Is it anything I can
do?"

The young man came in slowly and with a certain timidity, and stood by
the mantelshelf, looking down at her as she knelt and toasted the bread.
He was very thin--painfully so--and very pale. There were shadows round
his large, dark eyes--the eyes of a man who dreams--and his black hair,
worn rather long, swept away from a forehead as white as a woman's, but
with two deep lines between the eyes which told the story of pain
suffered patiently and in silence.

His hands were long and thin--the hands of a musician--and the one on
which his chin rested as he leaned against the mantelshelf trembled
slightly. He had been practicing for three hours. He wore an old, a very
old black velvet jacket, and trousers bulgy at the knees and frayed at
the edges; but both were well brushed, and his shirt and collar were
scrupulously clean, though, like the trousers, they; showed signs of
wear.

He occupied a room just above the Lortons' flat, and the sound of his
piano and violin had entered so fully into Nell's daily life that she
was sometimes conscious of a feeling of uneasiness when it ceased, and
often caught herself waiting for it to begin again.

"Is it anything I can do?" she asked again, as he remained silent and
lost in