“Here endeth the Avery Symphony!” he declared, swinging round again on the music-stool.  “I could show you another Avery, but she is not on view to everybody.  It’s quite possible that she has never seen herself yet.”

He got up with the words, tweaked Gracie’s hair, caressed Jeanie’s, and strolled across to the fire beside which Avery sat with her work.

“It’s awfully kind of you to tolerate me like this,” he said.

“Isn’t it?” said Avery, without raising her eyes.

He looked down at her, an odd gleam in his own that came and went like a leaping flame.

“You suffer fools gladly, don’t you?” he said, a queer inflection that was half a challenge in his voice.

She frowned very slightly above her stocking.  “Not particularly,” she said.

“You bear with them then?” Piers tone was insistent.

She paused as though considering her reply.  “I generally try to avoid them,” she said finally.

“You keep aloof—­and darn stockings,” suggested Piers.

“And listen to your music,” said Avery.

“Do you like my music?” He shot the question at her imperiously.

Avery nodded.

“Really?  You do really?” There was boyish eagerness about him now.  He leaned towards her, his brown face aglow.

She nodded again.  “Do you ever—­write music?”

“No,” said Piers.

“Why not?”

He answered with a curious touch of bitterness.  “No one would understand it if I did.”

“But what a mistake!” she said.

“Is it?  Why?” His voice sounded stubborn.

She looked suddenly straight up at him and spoke with impulsive warmth.  “Because it is quite beside the point.  It wouldn’t matter to anyone but yourself whether people understood it or not.  Of course popularity is pleasant.  Everyone likes it.  But do you suppose the really big people think at all about the world’s opinion when they are at work?  They just give of their best because nothing less would satisfy them, but they don’t do it because they want to be appreciated by the crowd.  Genius always gets above the crowd.  It’s only those who can’t rise above their critics who really care what the critics say.”

She stopped.  Her face was flushed, her eyes kindling; but she lowered them very suddenly and returned to her work.  For the fitful gleam in Piers’ eyes had leaped in response to a blaze so hot, so ardent, that she could not meet it unflinching.

She was oddly grateful to him when he passed her brief confusion by as though he had not seen it.  “So I’m a genius, am I?” he said, and laughed a careless laugh.  “Are you listening, Queen of my heart?  Aunt Avery says I’m a genius.”

He moved to Jeanie’s sofa, and sat down on the edge of it.  Her hand stole instantly into his.

“Yes, of course,” she said, in her soft, tired voice.  “That’s what I meant when I was trying to remember that other word—­the word that begins ‘hyp.’”