He rose and opened the grand piano that stood in the back drawing-room.  He went up to her (meeting with a nervous smile Flossie’s inquiring look as he passed).  He stood a moment with one arm on the chimney-piece, and waited, looking down at Lucia.  Presently she raised her head and smiled, as surely she could never have smiled at Soper.

“Do you want me to play for you?” she said.

“That is exactly what I wanted.”  He drew the flattering inference that, while apparently absorbed in conversation with Miss Bramble, she had been aware of his presence in the background, and of every movement he had made.

“Well, I must ask our hostess first, mustn’t I?”

She went to that lady and bent over her with her request.

If Lucia’s aim was to give pleasure she had certainly achieved it.  Mrs. Downey may or may not have loved music, but she was visibly excited at the prospect of hearing it.  So were the boarders.  They settled themselves solemnly in their seats.  Spinks crushed his noisy newspaper into a ball and thrust it behind him; Miss Bramble put away her clicking needles; while Mr. Soper let himself sink into a chair with elaborate silence; one and all (with the exception of Mr. Partridge, who slept) they turned their faces, politely expectant, towards the inner room.  It struck Lucia that in this the poor things were better mannered than many a more aristocratic audience.

Rickman lit the candles on the piano and seated himself beside her.

“I know what I have got to play.” said she.

“What?”

“The Sonata Appassionata, isn’t it?”

“Fancy your remembering.”

“Of course I remember.  It isn’t every one who cares for Beethoven.  I’m afraid the others won’t like it, though.”

“They’ve got to like it,” he said doggedly.

And Lucia, with her fatal passion for giving pleasure, played.  And as the stream of music flowed through the half-lit room, it swept away all sense of his surroundings, all memory of the love and truth and honour pledged to his betrothed, and every little scruple of pity or of conscience.  It bore down upon the barriers that stood between him and Lucia, and swept them away too.  And the secret sources of his inspiration, sealed for so many months, were opened and flowed with the flowing of the stream; and over them the deep flood of his longing and his misery rose and broke and mingled with the tumult.  And through it, and high above it all, it was as if his soul made music with her; turning the Sonata Appassionata into a singing of many voices, a symphony of many strings.