oman came, since she
didn't enjoy herself, since she was impenetrable to the intimate,
peculiar charm. You could only suppose that her object was to
prevent its penetrating Wilkinson, to keep the other women off. Her
eyes never left him.

It was all very well for Evey to talk. She _might_, of course, have
been wiser in the beginning. She might have confined the creature to
their big monthly crushes, where, as Evey had suggested, she would
easily have been mislaid and lost. But so, unfortunately, would
Wilkinson; and the whole point was how not to lose him.

Evey said she was tired of being told off to entertain Mrs.
Wilkinson. She was beginning to be rather disagreeable about it. She
said Cornelia was getting to care too much about that Wilkinson man.
She wouldn't have minded playing up to her if she had approved of
the game; but Mrs. Wilkinson was, after all, you know, Mr.
Wilkinson's wife.

Mrs. Norman cried a little. She told Evey she ought to have known it
was his spirit that she cared about. But she owned that it wasn't
right to sacrifice poor Evey. Neither, since he _had_ a wife, was it
altogether right for her to care about Wilkinson's spirit to the
exclusion of her other friends.

Then, one Friday, Mrs. Norman, relieving her sister for once, made a
discovery while Evey, who was a fine musician, played. Mrs.
Wilkinson did, after all, take an interest in something; she was
accessible to the throbbing of Evey's bow across the strings.

She had started; her eyes had turned from Wilkinson and fastened on
the player. There was a light in them, beautiful and piercing, as if
her soul had suddenly been released from some hiding-place in its
unlovely house. Her face softened, her mouth relaxed, her eyes
closed. She lay back in her chair, at peace, withdrawn from them,
positively lost.

Mrs. Norman slipped across the room to the corner where Wilkinson
sat alone. His face lightened as she came.

"It's extraordinary," he said, "her love of music."

Mrs. Norman assented. It _was_ extraordinary, if you came to think
of it. Mrs. Wilkinson had no understanding of the art. What did it
mean to her? Where did it take her? You could see she was
transported, presumably to some place of chartered stupidity, of
condoned oblivion, where nobody could challenge her right to enter
and remain.

"So soothing," said Wilkinson, "to the nerves."

Mrs. Norman smiled at him. She felt that, under cover of the music,
his spirit was s