s is not good, you know," he said, as if communing with himself
alone; "here is no room for the music to spread. All these," he pointed
to another ornament, "are so very, very bad. But some day, perhaps," he
added, with another smile, "you will hear me in a good place."

Then he raised the violin to position once more.

"Choose what you will have," he told her.

"Oh, forget that I am here," she pleaded, speaking with a startled
hushedness, as if no claim of conventional politeness might dare intrude
itself upon that bewildering hour, "do not remember that I am
here,--play as you would if you were quite alone."

"That is very well," he said, with a recurrence to his unseeing stare
and dreamy tone, "because for me you really are not here. Nothing is
here;--the violin is not here;--I am myself not here;--only the music
exists. And if I talk," he added slowly, "the inspiration may leave
me."

He went beside the piano and turned his back towards her, and then his
prayer made itself real and his love found words....

She wept, and when he ceased to play he remained standing in silence as
the very reverent rest for a short interval after the termination of
holy service....

After a while he moved to where the case lay open on the floor and knelt
again, laying his instrument carefully in its place and covering it with
its little knit wool quilt. Then he locked the lid down, replaced the
keys in his pocket, and, rising, seemed to return to earth.

"Can you understand now," he asked, taking a chair by her side,--"can
you understand now how it would be for me if I lost my power to create
music?"

"Yes," she said, very humbly.

"I think that nothing so bad could arrive," he went on, pulling his
moustache and looking at her as he spoke, "because I am very much more
strong than anything that may arrive at me, and the music is still much
more strong than I. But if that _could_ arrive, that a trouble might
kill my power, you can know how bad it would be for me."

She sat there, gazing always at her new conception of him. The tears
which she had shed during his music filled her face with a sort of
tender charm. It did not occur to her that any words of hers could be
other than a desecration of those minutes.

"I am going now," he said presently, rising. "I have done no work since
in June, but I feel it within me to write what I have played to-night."
He went over and took up the violin case and then he laid it down again