aited in this room for her father to come back to dinner; the faintness
of those hungry hours; worse still, that yearning for love. She must
have died if she had not gone away. If it had to happen all over again
she must act as she had acted. How well she remembered the moment when
she felt that her life in Dulwich had become impossible. She was coming
from the village where she had been paying some bills, and looking up
she had suddenly seen the angle of a house and a bare tree, and she
could still hear the voice which had spoken out of her very soul. "Shall
I never get away from this place?" it had cried. "Shall I go on doing
these daily tasks for ever?" The strange, vehement agony of the voice
had frightened her.... At that moment her eyes were attracted by a sort
of harpsichord. "One of father's experiments," she said, running her
fingers over the keys. "A sort of cross between a harpsichord and a
virginal; up here the intonation is that of a virginal."

"I forgot to ask you miss"--Evelyn turned from the window, startled; it
was Agnes who had come back--"if you was going to stop for dinner, for
there's very little in the house, only a bit of cold beef. I should be
ashamed to put it on the table, miss; I'm sure you couldn't eat it.
Master don't think what he eats; he's always thinking of his music. I
hope you aren't like that, miss?"

"So he doesn't eat much. How is my father looking, Agnes?"

"Middling, miss. He varies about a good bit; he's gone rather thin
lately."

"Is he lonely, do you think ... in the evenings?"

"No, miss; I don't hear him say nothing about being lonely. For the last
couple of years he never did more than come home to sleep and his meals,
and he'd spend the evenings copying out the music."

"And off again early in the morning?"

"That's it, miss, with his music tied up in a brown paper parcel.
Sometimes Mr. Dean comes and helps him to write the music."

"Ah!... but I'm sorry he doesn't eat better."

"He eats better when Mr. Dean's here. They has a nice little dinner
together. Now he's taken up with that 'ere instrument, the harpy chord,
they's making. He's comin' home to-night to finish it; he says he can't
get it finished nohow--that they's always something more to do to it."

"I wonder if we could get a nice dinner for him this evening?"

"Well, miss, you see there's no shops to speak of about here. You know
that as well as I do."

"I wonder what your cooking is like?"

"I don