, so
that ever afterwards she connected the two.

"'Do roses in the moonlight glow
Like this and this?' I could not see
His eyes, and yet--they were quite wet,
Blinded, I think! What should I be
If in that hour I did not know
My own diviner debt?"

or

"Wrapped in incense gloom,
In drifting clouds and golden light;
Once I was shod with fire, and trod
Beethoven's path through storm and night:
It is too late now to resume
My monologue with God."

"I don't wonder Chopin had his piano carried out into the fields!" she
commented. "I don't believe he could have composed in the house. You
hear the wind blowing through his pieces, and see the tassels of the
laburnum-tree he was sitting under swaying about in it."

The concert was an annual gaiety which most of the people in the
neighbourhood attended, and was generally much above the average of
village performances. North-country folk are musical, and this district
of the Pennines had produced many voices that passed on to cathedral
choirs. Instrumental music, also, was appreciated and understood, and
before the war there had been quite a good little orchestra in the
parish. When Mr. Fleming drew up his programme, he knew the audience for
whom he was catering, and did not fill it entirely with coon songs and
ragtimes. Diana, to whom the affair loomed as the main event of the
holidays, discussed at the Vicarage the eternally feminine question of
dress.

"No one ever comes very smart," Mrs. Fleming assured her.

"But one likes to see the performers in something pretty," pleaded
Diana. "It makes it so much more festive, doesn't it?"

"Mother, you intend to go in evening-dress, don't you?" said Meg.

Mrs. Fleming had intended nothing of the sort, but urged on by the
girls, she took a review of her wardrobe. She shook her head over the
result.

"I haven't anything at all except that grey silk, and it's as old as the
hills. Why, I got it for my sister's wedding, when Roger was a baby!"

"But fashions come round again," said Diana, who, with Meg and Elsie,
had been allowed to watch what came out of the big ottoman in the spare
bedroom. "Why, this dress is the very image of the picture of one in
that magazine Mother sent me from Paris! It only wants the sleeves
shortened and some lace put in, and the neck turned down to make it
lower, and then a fichu put round. Here's the very thing! I'd fix it
for you if you'd let me. I'd adore