of the house, about the sheeted drawing-room glimpsed through the open window, about the view of Mozewater...!  She felt acutely and painfully sorry for, and yet envious of, the young girl in a plain blue frock who used to haunt the house and the garden, and who had somehow made the house and the garden holy for evermore by her unhappiness and her longings....  Audrey was crying....  She heard a step and stood upright.  It was Musa’s step.

“I have never seen you so exquisite,” said Musa in a murmur subdued and yet enthusiastic.  All his faculties seemed to be dwelling reflectively upon her with passionate appreciation.

They had at last begun to talk, really—­he in French, and she partly in French and partly in English.  It was her tears, or perhaps her gesture in trying to master them, that had loosed their tongues.  The ancient dog was forgotten, and could not understand why.  Audrey was excusably startled by Musa’s words and tone, and by the sudden change in his attitude.  She thought that his personal distinction at the moment was different from and superior to any other in her experience.  She had a comfortable feeling of condescension towards Nick and towards Jane Foley.  And at the same time she blamed Musa, perceiving that as usual he was behaving like a child who cannot grasp the great fact that life is very serious.

“Yes,” she said.  “That’s all very fine, that is.  You pretend this, that, and the other.  But why are you here?  Why aren’t you at work in Paris?  You’ve got the chance of a lifetime, and instead of staying at home and practising hard and preparing yourself, you come gadding over to England simply because there’s a bit of money in your pocket!”

She was very young, and in the splendour of the magnificent morning she looked the emblem of simplicity; but in her heart she was his mother, his sole fount of wisdom and energy and shrewdness.

Pain showed in his sensitive features, and then appeal, and then a hot determination.

“I came because I could not work,” he said.

“Because you couldn’t work?  Why couldn’t you work?” There was no yielding in her hard voice.

“I don’t know!  I don’t know!  I suppose it is because you are not there, because you have made yourself necessary to me; or,” he corrected quickly, “because I have made you necessary to myself.  Oh!  I can practise for so many hours per day.  But it is useless.  It is not authentic practice.  I think not of the music.  It is as if some other person was playing, with my arm, on my violin.  I am not there.  I am with you, where you are.  It is the same day after day, every day, every day.  I am done for.  I am convinced that I am done for.  These concerts will infallibly be my ruin, and I shall be shamed before all Paris.”

“And did you come to England to tell me this?”

“Yes.”

She was relieved, for she had thought of another explanation of his escapade, and had that explanation proved to be the true one, she was very ready to make unpleasantness to the best of her ability.  Nevertheless, though relieved in one direction, she was gravely worried in another.  She had undertaken the job of setting Musa grandiosely on his artistic career, and the difficulties of it were growing more and more complex and redoubtable.