cent of the moss and the weeds shining
and dripping on its huge rim. Her heart filled. She felt a little tremor
in her throat. All at once she knew that if she went on listening to
that humming wheel and feeling the freshness of the air, she would cry.
She pulled herself together, and for a while saw only a vague radiance
in the room and the dim forms grouped about. She could not remember
which was which. All seemed good and dear to her. The trumpet notes had
come back, and in a few moments the music ceased.... Someone was closing
the great doors from inside the schoolroom. As the side behind which she
was sitting swung slowly to, she caught a glimpse, through the crack, of
four boys with close-cropped heads, sitting at the long table. The gas
was out and the room was dim, but a reading-lamp in the centre of the
table cast its light on their bowed heads.

8

The playing of the two Martins brought back the familiar feeling of
English self-consciousness. Solomon, the elder one, sat at her Beethoven
sonata, an adagio movement, with a patch of dull crimson on the pallor
of the cheek she presented to the room, but she played with a heavy
fervour, preserving throughout the characteristic marching staccato of
the bass, and gave unstinted value to the shading of each phrase. She
made Miriam feel nervous at first and then--as she went triumphantly
forward and let herself go so tremendously--traction-engine, thought
Miriam--in the heavy fortissimos,--a little ashamed of such expression
coming from English hands. The feeling of shame lingered as the younger
sister followed with a spirited vivace. Her hollow-cheeked pallor
remained unstained, but her thin lips were set and her hard eyes were
harder. She played with determined nonchalance and an extraordinarily
facile rapidity, and Miriam's uneasiness changed insensibly to the
conviction that these girls were learning in Germany not to be
ashamed of "playing with expression." All the things she had heard Mr.
Strood--who had, as the school prospectus declared, been "educated in
Leipzig"--preach and implore, "style," "expression," "phrasing," "light
and shade," these girls were learning, picking up from these wonderful
Germans. They did not do it quite like them though. They did not think
only about the music, they thought about themselves too. Miriam believed
she could do it as the Germans did. She wanted to get her own music and
play it as she had always dimly known it ought