He was indeed doing it beautifully all through.  He watched her little fingers, and the very instant they had disposed of a morsel he offered her another.  It was a deep and exquisite pleasure to him to observe her in that act of eating and drinking.  He had never seen anything like the prettiness, the dainty precision that she brought to it.  He had never seen anything so pretty as Ally herself, in the rough gray tweed that exaggerated her fineness and fragility; never anything so distracting and at the same time so heartrending as the gray muff and collar of squirrel fur, and the little gray fur hat with the bit of blue peacock’s breast laid on one side of it like a folded wing.

As he watched her he thought, “If I was to touch her I should break her.”

* * * * *

Then the conversation began.

“I was sorry,” he said, “to hear yo was so poorly, Miss Cartaret.”

“I’m all right now.  You can see I’m all right.”

He shook his head.  “I saw yo’ a moonth ago, and I didn’t think then I sud aver see yo’ at Oopthorne again.”

He paused.

“’E’s a woonderful maan, Dr. Rawcliffe.”

“He is,” said Alice.

Her voice was very soft, inaudible as a breath.  All the blood in her body seemed to rush into her face and flood it and spread up her forehead to the roots of the gold hair that the east wind had crisped round the edges of her hat.  She thought, “It’ll be awful if he guesses, and if he talks.”  But when she looked at Greatorex his face reassured her, it was so utterly innocent of divination.  And the next moment he went straight to the matter in hand.

“An’ what’s this thing you’ve coom to aassk me, Miss Cartaret?”

“Well”—­she looked at him and her gray eyes were soft and charmingly candid—­“it was if you’d be kind enough to sing at our concert.  You’ve heard about it?”

“Ay, I’ve heard about it, right enoof.”

“Well—­won’t you?  You have sung, you know.”

“Yes.  I’ve soong.  But thot was in t’ owd schoolmaaster’s time.  Yo’ wouldn’t care to hear my singin’ now.  I’ve got out of the way of it, like.”

“You haven’t, Mr. Greatorex.  I’ve heard you.  You’ve got a magnificent voice.  There isn’t one like it in the choir.”

“Ay, there’s not mooch wrong with my voice, I rackon.  But it’s like this, look yo.  I joost soong fer t’ schoolmaaster.  He was a friend—­a personal friend of mine.  And he’s gone.  And I’m sure I doan’ knaw—­”

“I know, Mr. Greatorex.  I know exactly how you feel about it.  You sang to please your friend.  He’s gone and you don’t like the idea of singing for anybody else—­for a set of people you don’t know.”

She had said it.  It was the naked truth and he wasn’t going to deny it.

She went on.  “We’re strangers and perhaps you don’t like us very much, and you feel that singing for us would be like singing the Lord’s song in a strange country; you feel as if it would be profanation—­a kind of disloyalty.”