Clarice was moved by a sudden whim to a change of humour.  She sprang from her dejection to the extreme of good spirits.  Her singing proved it, for she chose a couple of light-hearted French ballads, and sang them with a dainty humour which matched the daintiness of the words and music.  Her shrugs and pouts, the pretty arching of her eyebrows, the whimsical note of mockery in her voice, represented her to Drake under a new aspect, helped to complete her in his thoughts much as her voice, very sweet and clear for all its small compass, completed in some queer way the flowers and sunshine.  Her manner, however, did more than that; it gave to him, conscious of a certain stiffness and inflexibility of temperament, an inner sense of completion anticipated from his hope of a time when their lives would join.  He leaned forward in his chair, watching the play of her face, the lights and shadows in the curls of her hair, the nimble touch of her fingers on the keys.  Clarice stopped suddenly.  ‘You don’t sing?’

‘I have no accomplishments at all.’

She laughed and began to play one of Chopin’s nocturnes.  Her fingers rattled against the ivory on a run up the piano.  She stopped and took a ring from her right hand; Drake noticed that it was the emerald ring which he had seen winking in the firelight on that evening when she had covered her face from him.  She dropped the ring on the top of the piano at Drake’s side.  It spun round once or twice, and then settled down with a little tinkling whirr upon the rim of its hoop Drake fancied that the removal of this particular ring was in some inexplicable way of hopeful augury to him.

Clarice resumed her playing, but as she neared the end of the nocturne, Drake perceived that there was a growing change, a declension, in her style.  She seemed to lose the spirit of the nocturne and even her command on the instrument; the firm touch faltered into indecision, from indecision to absolute unsteadiness; the notes, before clear and distinct, now slurred into one another with a tremulous wavering.

‘You are fond of music?’ she asked at length, with something of an effort.

‘Very,’ he replied, ’though it puzzles me.  It’s like opening a book written in a language you don’t understand.  You get a glimpse of a meaning here and there, but no meaning really.  I can’t explain what I feel,’ he added, with a laugh.  ‘I want Mallinson to help me.’

‘You admire Mr. Mallinson?’ asked Clarice, stopping suddenly.

‘Well, one always admires the class of work one can’t do oneself, eh?’

‘That’s very generous of you.’

‘Why generous?’ Drake leaned suddenly forward.  His habit of putting questions abrupt and straight to the point had discomposed Miss Le Mesurier upon an occasion before.  She answered hurriedly.  ’I mean—­you spoke as if you meant that class of work was above your own.’

‘Oh, there’s no basis of comparison.’