It was exciting to go to London with him, to bid him good-bye at Victoria—­she to her lessons, he to his—­to meet him in the evenings, and in conjunction to arrange the programme of their next concert.  These interests and ambitions had sufficed to fill her life, and to keep the greater ambition out of sight; and since her mother’s death she had lived happily with her father, helping him in his work.  But lately things had changed.  Some of her pupils had gone abroad, others had married, and interest in the concerts declined.  For a little while the old music had seemed as if it were going to attract sufficient attention, but already their friends had heard enough, and Mr. Innes had been compelled to postpone the next, which had been announced for the beginning of February.  There would be no concert now till March, perhaps not even then; so there was nothing for her to look forward to, and the wet windy weather which swept the suburb contributed to her disheartenment.  The only event of the day seemed to be her father’s departure in the morning.  Immediately after breakfast he tied up his music in a brown paper parcel and put his violin into its case; he spoke of missing his train, and, from the windows of the music-room, she saw him hastening down the road.  She had asked him if there were any MSS. he wished copied in the British Museum; absent-mindedly he had answered “No;” and, drumming on the glass with her fingers, she wondered how the day would pass.  There was nothing to do; there was nothing even to think about.  She was tired of thinking that a pupil might come back—­that a new pupil might at any moment knock at the door.  She was tired of wondering if her father’s concerts would ever pay—­if the firm of music publishers with whom he was now in treaty would come to terms and enable him to give a concert in their hall, or if they would break off negotiations, as many had done before.  And, more than of everything else, she was tired of thinking if her father would ever have money to send her abroad, or if she would remain in Dulwich always.

One morning, as she was returning from Dulwich, where she had gone to pay the weekly bills, she discovered that she was no longer happy.  She stopped, and, with an empty heart, saw the low-lying fields with poultry pens, and the hobbled horse grazing by the broken hedge.  The old village was her prison, and she longed as a bird longs.  She had trundled her hoop there; she ought to love it, but she didn’t, and, looking on its too familiar aspect, her aching heart asked if it would never pass from her.  It seemed to her that she had not strength nor will to return home.  A little further on she met the vicar.  He bowed, and she wondered how he could have thought that she could care for him.  Oh, to live in that Rectory with him!  She pitied the young man who wore brown clothes, and whose employment in a bank prevented him from going abroad for his health.  These people were well enough, but they were not for her.  She seemed to see beyond London, beyond the seas, whither she could not say, and she could not quell the yearning which rose to her lips like a wave, and over them.