So lost was he that he failed to perceive the effect of her playing on the audience of the outer room.  Flossie sat there, very quiet in her awe; Miss Bishop kept her loose mouth open, drinking in the sounds; Mr. Soper leaned forward breathing heavily in a stupid wonder; there, over the tops of the chairs, one up-standing ribbon on Miss Bramble’s cap seemed to be beating time to the music all by itself; while Mrs. Downey flushed and swelled with pride at the astonishing capabilities of her piano.  He did not notice either that, as Lucia played the tender opening bars of the Sonata, Mr. Partridge shook off the slumber that bound him at this hour; that, as she struck the thundering chords that signal the presto Finale, he raised his head like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet.  He stared solemnly at Lucia as she came forward followed by Rickman; then he rose from his own consecrated chair, heavily but with a certain dignity suited to the moral grandeur of the act, and made a gesture of abdication.

“I was a professional myself once,” said he.  “My instrument was the flute.”

There was no doubt about the spirit of Lucia’s reception that night.  Perhaps the finest appreciation of connoisseurs had never touched her more than did the praise of that simple audience.  Rickman was the only one who did not thank her.  For when her playing was over he had turned suddenly very cold, seized with a fierce shivering, the reaction from the tense fever of his nerves; and it was with difficulty that he controlled the chattering of his teeth.  But before they parted for the night he asked if he might “call” some afternoon; his tone pointing the allusion to the arrangement that permitted this approach, “We can’t talk very well here, can we?” he said.

She answered by inviting him and Miss Walker to tea the next day.  He was conscious of a base inward exultation when he heard poor Flossie say that she could only look in later for a little while.  In October, work was heavy at the Bank, and the Beaver seldom got home till after tea-time.  His conscience asked him sternly if he had reckoned on that too?

When to-morrow came, Miss Hoots was busy also, and disappeared after tea.  He had certainly reckoned on that disappearance.

There was a moment of embarrassment on his part when he found himself alone with Lucia in the room (his room) that he had made ready for her.  He had done his work so thoroughly well that the place looked as if it had been ready for her since the beginning of time.

She was tired.  He remembered how tired she used to be at Harmouth; and he noticed with a pang how little it took to tire her now.  She leaned back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for her (chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue).  She had been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap.  Her feet rested on his fender, they stretched out towards the