emotional tensity. Then
Mallory remarked lightly:

"I enjoyed the Charity Concert at Exeter."

"Were you there?" exclaimed Nan in surprise.

"Certainly I was there. When I was as near as Abbencombe, you don't
suppose I was going to miss the chance of hearing you play, do you?"

"I never thought of your being there," she answered.

"And now that I know you've French blood in your veins, I can
understand what always puzzled me in your playing."

"What was that?"

"The un-English element in it."

Nan smiled.

"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him.

His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her.

"One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself--as you
do."

She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.

"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't
dramatic--it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned
quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to
my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his
half-French nationality. "But yes--I'm too English to please her.
It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother
loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she
desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my
mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very
little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the
inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly
conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief
reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his
voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"

"I expect so--if Kitty wishes it."

"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the
privilege of friendship, isn't it?"

There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty,
and Nan's heart warmed towards him.

"Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't
care for it--playing in a drawing-room after dinner."

"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the
chosen moment are what you like."

"How do you know?" sh