vous at wrong moments. The minx peeped
up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and
did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite
at his ease.

The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and
took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he
usually did, and in need of a real friend.

"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.

"Why should it be anything special?"

"But it is!"

He laughed almost uneasily.

"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed.
"Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or
three things, if I may."

Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.

"Anything," she said.

"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other
evening? Did you--did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think
it"--he paused--"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.

"Provincial!"

Heath was answered, but he persisted.

"What did you think?"

"I thought it alarming."

"Alarming?"

"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."

"Disturbed your mind?"

"Or my heart, perhaps."

"But why? How?"

"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."

Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt
very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had
moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he
were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to
conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and
despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner
was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be
reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who
had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought,
what anyone thought of his music.

"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.

"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.

"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"

"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon
me."

"It did really make a strong impression?"

"Very strong."

"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking
care of?"

"I am sure you have."

"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.

"Is that what you came to ask me?"

Her fiery eyes seemed to search