Secretly, mysteriously he began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up.  And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ran smoothly and joyously along.

The west window of the drawing-room was open to the terrace.  Eliot and Anne sat out there and listened.

“He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” she said.

Eliot shook his head.  “Not so wonderful as he was.  Not half so wonderful as he ought to be.  He’ll never be good enough for a professional.  He knows he won’t.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing.  That’s just it.  Nothing ever will happen.  He’s stuck.  It’s the same with his singing.  He’ll never be any good if he can’t go away and study somewhere.  If it isn’t Berlin or Leipzig it ought to be London.  But father can’t live there and the mater won’t go anywhere without him.  So poor Col-Col’s got to stick here doing nothing, with the same rotten old masters telling him things he knew years ago....  It’ll be worse next term when he goes to Cheltenham.  He won’t be able to practice, and nobody’ll care a damn....  Not that that would matter if he cared himself.”

Colin was playing the slow movement now, the grave, pure passion, pressed out from the solemn bass, throbbed, tense with restraint.

“Oh Eliot, he does care.”

“In a way.  Not enough to keep on at it.  You’ve got to slog like blazes, if you want to get on.”

“Jerrold won’t, ever, then.”

“Oh yes he will. He’ll get on all right, because he doesn’t care; because work comes so jolly easy to him.  He hasn’t got to break his heart over it....  The trouble with Colin is that he cares, awfully, for such a lot of other things.  Us, for instance.  He’ll leave off in the middle of a movement if he hears Jerrold yelling for him.  He ought to be able to chuck us all; we’re all of us in his way.  He ought to hate us.  He ought to hate Jerrold worst of all.”

Adeline and John Severn came round the corner of the terrace.

“What’s all this about hating?” he said.

“What do you mean, Eliot?” said she.

Eliot raised himself wearily.  “I mean,” he said, “you’ll never be any good at anything if you’re not prepared to commit a crime for it.”

“I know what I’d commit a crime for,” said Anne.  “But I shan’t tell.”

“You needn’t. You’d do it for anybody you were gone on.”

“Well, I would.  I’d tell any old lie to make them happy.  I’d steal for them if they were hungry.  I’d kill anybody who hurt them.”

“I believe you would,” said Eliot.

“We know who Anne would commit her crimes for.”

“We don’t.  We don’t know anything she doesn’t want us to,” said Eliot, shielding her from his mother’s mischief.

“That’s right, Eliot, stick up for her,” said John.  He knew what she was thinking of.  “Would Jerrold commit a crime?” he said.