“Absolutely,” said Hugh.

“And I didn’t want to leave Paris....  Of course I was playing Chopin bits, with an ache in my heart to match, that I couldn’t bear and was enjoying to the utmost.  What do girls play now?  Then all of us had attacks of Chopin.  Madame used to laugh and say, ’I hear the harbour bar still moaning,’ and order that particular girl’s favourite dessert.  She spoiled us.  And Monsieur would say something about si jeunesse savait.  He was a nice old man, not very successful; his colleagues patronized him.  Oh yes he was obvious!

“And then Melanie opened the door and announced, ’Monsieur, le cousin de Mademoiselle.’  I don’t know what made her do it except a general wish to be kind.  She remembered from the other night, and, besides, she hated to attempt English names; she made salmi of them.”

Hugh had ceased to hold her eyes long ago.  They looked into the window’s square of light.  He had no wish to intrude his presence.  She was finding it natural to tell him, just as he had acknowledged her right to explore the intimate places of his soul.  Things simply happened that way sometimes, and one was humbly thankful.

“‘Go on,’ he said.  ‘Don’t stop.’  He sat in a corner of the sofa, and for a while the impetus of my start carried me on.  Then the bottom dropped out of Chopin.  I went over and sat in the other corner.  It was a long sofa; it felt as long as the world.

“Do you remember that heart-breakingly beautiful voice of his that could make you feel anything he was feeling?  It was like magic.  He said at last: 

“‘So you are going home to be married?’

“I nodded.

“‘Betty,’ he said, ‘are you happy, quite happy, about—­everything?’

“‘Oh yes!’ I said.  ‘Oh yes, Professor Fowler!’ The curious thing about it was that I spoke the truth when I considered it seriously.

“He said, ‘Then that’s all right.’  Then he laughed a little and said, ’Do you always call me Professor Fowler, even when you shut your door on the world at night and are all alone with God and the silence?’

“‘And Claudia Jones,’ I added, stupidly.

“He considered that seriously and said, ’I didn’t know about Claudia Jones; she may inhibit even the silence and the other ingredient.  I suppose you call me Teacher.’

“I cried out at that.  ‘I might call you cher maitre, as they do her.’

“He said, ‘That may do for the present.’

“’We looked into the fire and the lilacs filled the pause as adequately as Chopin could have done.  All at once he got up and came over to me—­it seemed the most natural thing in the world—­across that wilderness of sofa.

“‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that you won’t let me off that promise.’

“‘No, no!’ I cried, all my old panic flooding over me again.  I threw my hands out, and suddenly he had caught them in his and was holding me half away from him, and he was saying, in that tragic voice of his: