on to the notes which fumbled and slurred into each
other almost soundlessly until the thumping began again. At the musical
evenings, organised by Eve as a winter set-off to the tennis-club,
she had both played and sung, hoping each time afresh to be able to
reproduce the effects which came so easily when she was alone or only
with Eve. But she could not discover the secret of getting rid of her
nervousness. Only twice had she succeeded--at the last school concert
when she had been too miserable to be nervous and Mr. Strood had told
her she did him credit and, once she had sung "Chanson de Florian" in a
way that had astonished her own listening ear--the notes had laughed and
thrilled out into the air and come back to her from the wall behind the
piano.... The day before the tennis tournament.

6

The girls were all settling down to fancy work, the white-cuffed hands
of the Martins were already jerking crochet needles, faces were bending
over fine embroideries and Minna Blum had trundled a mounted lace-pillow
into the brighter light.

Miriam went to the schoolroom and fetched from her work-basket the piece
of canvas partly covered with red and black wool in diamond pattern that
was her utmost experience of fancy work.

As she returned she half saw Fraulein Pfaff, sitting as if enthroned on
a high-backed chair in front of the centremost of the mirrors filling
the wall spaces between the long French windows, signal to her, to come
to that side of the room.

Timorously ignoring the signal she got herself into a little low chair
in the shadow of the half-closed swing door and was spreading out her
wool-work on her knee when the Vorspielen began.

Emma Bergmann was playing. The single notes of the opening _motif_
of Chopin's Fifteenth Nocturne fell pensively into the waiting room.
Miriam, her fatigue forgotten, slid to a featureless freedom. It seemed
to her that the light with which the room was filled grew brighter and
clearer. She felt that she was looking at nothing and yet was aware of
the whole room like a picture in a dream. Fear left her. The human
forms all round her lost their power. They grew suffused and dim.... The
pensive swing of the music changed to urgency and emphasis.... It came
nearer and nearer. It did not come from the candlelit corner where the
piano was.... It came from everywhere. It carried her out of the house,
out of the world.

It hastened with her, on and on towards great brightnes