tate rush across the room and out of the
door was followed by a tinkle of laughter from Sylvia. Morrison looked
around at her over his shoulder, with a flashing smile of mutual
understanding, but he finished the prelude before he spoke. Then,
without turning around, as he pulled out another sheet from the music
heaped on the piano, he remarked: "If that French philosopher was
right when he said no disease is as contagious as love-making, we may
expect soon to find the very chairs and tables in this house clasped
in each other's arms. Old as I am, I feel it going to my head, like a
bed of full-blooming valerian."

Sylvia made no answer. She felt herself flushing, and could not trust
her voice to be casual. He continued for a moment to thumb over the
music aimlessly, as though waiting for her to speak.

The beautiful room, darkened against the midsummer heat, shimmered
dimly in a transparent half-light, the vivid life of its bright
chintz, its occasional brass, its clean, daring spots of crimson and
purple flowers, subdued into a fabulous, half-seen richness. There was
not a sound. The splendid heat of the early August afternoon flamed,
and paused, and held its breath.

Into this silence, like a bird murmuring a drowsy note over a still
pool, there floated the beginning of _Am Meer_. Sylvia sat, passive
to her finger-tips, a vase filled to the brim with melody. She stared
with unseeing eyes at the back of the man at the piano. She was not
thinking of him, she was not aware that she was conscious of him at
all; but hours afterward wherever she looked, she saw for an instant
again in miniature the slender, vigorous, swaying figure; the thick
brown hair, streaked with white and curling slightly at the ends; the
brooding head....

When the last note was still, the man stood up and moved away from the
piano. He dropped into an arm-chair near Sylvia, and leaning his
fine, ugly head back against the brilliant chintz, he looked at her
meditatively. His great bodily suavity gave his every action a curious
significance and grace. Sylvia, still under the spell of his singing,
did not stir, returning his look out of wide, dreaming eyes.

When he spoke, his voice blended with the silence almost as
harmoniously as the music.... "Do you know what I wish you would
do, Miss Sylvia Marshall? I wish you would tell me something about
yourself. Now that I'm no longer forbidden to look at you, or think
about you...."

"Forbidden?" aske