“I beg your pardon, old chap,” said Lancelot, rebuked and remorseful.

“Don’t mention it,” replied Peter.  “And whenever you decide to become rich and famous—­there’s your model.”

“Never!  Never!  Never!” cried Lancelot, when Peter went at ten.  “My poor Beethoven!  What you must have suffered!  Never mind, I’ll play you your moonlight sonata.”

He touched the keys gently and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him.  He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes half closed, seeing only inward visions.

And then, all at once, he awoke with a start, for Beethoven was barking towards the door, with pricked-up ears and rigid tail.

“Sh!  You little beggar,” he murmured, becoming conscious that the hour was late, and that he himself had been noisy at unbeseeming hours.  “What’s the matter with you?” And, with a sudden thought, he threw open the door.

It was merely Mary Ann.

Her face—­flashed so unexpectedly upon him—­had the piquancy of a vision, but its expression was one of confusion and guilt; there were tears on her cheeks; in her hand was a bedroom candle-stick.

She turned quickly, and began to mount the stairs.  Lancelot put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her face towards him and said in an imperious whisper:—­

“Now then, what’s up?  What are you crying about?”

“I ain’t—­I mean I’m not crying,” said Mary Ann, with a sob in her breath.

“Come, come, don’t fib.  What’s the matter?”

“I’m not crying, it’s only the music,” she murmured.

“The music,” he echoed, bewildered.

“Yessir.  The music always makes me cry—­but you can’t call it crying—­it feels so nice.”

“Oh, then you’ve been listening!”

“Yessir.”  Her eyes drooped in humiliation.

“But you ought to have been in bed,” he said.  “You get little enough sleep as it is.”

“It’s better than sleep,” she answered.

The simple phrase vibrated through him, like a beautiful minor chord.  He smoothed her hair tenderly.

“Poor child!” he said.

There was an instant’s silence.  It was past midnight, and the house was painfully still.  They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven’s eyes were upon them.  But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her, only just to lay his hand on her hair, as in benediction and pity.

“So you liked what I was playing,” he said, not without a pang of personal pleasure.

“Yessir; I never heard you play that before.”

“So you often listen!”

“I can hear you, even in the kitchen.  Oh, it’s just lovely!  I don’t care what I have to do then, if it’s grates or plates or steps.  The music goes and goes, and I feel back in the country again, and standing, as I used to love to stand of an evening, by the stile, under the big elm, and watch how the sunset did redden the white birches, and fade in the water.  Oh, it was so nice in the springtime, with the hawthorn that grew on the other bank, and the bluebells—­”