A grand piano was so placed that the light from either window or candles would fall comfortably upon the music-desk; and on a stool beside it rested a violin case.

Trent opened the case, and, lifting the violin from is cushiony bed of padded satin, fingered it caressingly.

“Can you read accompaniments?” he asked, flashing the question at her with his usual abruptness.

“Yes.”  Sara’s answer came simply, minus the mock-modest tag:  “A little,” or “I’ll do my best,” which most people seem to think it incumbent on them to add, in the circumstances.

It is one of the mysteries of convention why, when you are perfectly aware that you can do a thing, and do it well, you are expected to depreciate your capability under penalty of being accounted overburdened with conceit should you fail to do so.

“Good.”  Trent pulled out an armful of music from the cabinet and looked through it rapidly.

“We’ll have some of these.” ("These” being several suites for violin and piano.)

Sara’s lips twitched.  He was testing her rather highly, since the pianoforte score of the suites in question was by no means easy.  But, thanks to the wisdom of Patrick Lovell, who had seen to it that she studied under one of the finest masters of the day, she was not a musician by temperament alone, but had also a surprisingly good technique.

At the close of the second suite, Trent turned to her enthusiastically, his face aglow.  For the moment he was no longer the hermit, aloof and enigmatical, but an eager comrade, spontaneously appealing to a congenial spirit.

“That went splendidly, didn’t it?” he exclaimed.  “The pianoforte score is a pretty stiff one, but I was sure”—­smilingly—­“from the downright way you answered my question about accompaniments, that you’d prove equal to it.”

Sara smiled back at him.

“I didn’t think it necessary to make any conventional professions of modesty—­to you,” she said.  “You don’t—­wrap things up much—­yourself.”

He leaned against the piano, looking down at her.

“No.  Nothing I say can make things either better or worse for me, so I have at least gained freedom from the conventions.  That is one of my few compensations.”

“Compensations for what?” The question escaped her almost before she was aware, and she waited for the snub which she felt would inevitably follow her second indiscretion that afternoon.

But it did not come.  Instead, he fenced adroitly.

“Compensation for the limitations of a hermit’s life,” he said lightly.

“The life is your own choice,” she flashed back at him.

“Oh, no, we’re not always given a choice, you know.  This world isn’t a kind of sublimated children’s party.”

She regarded him thoughtfully.

“I think,” she said gravely, “we always get back out of life just what we put into it.”

His mouth twisted ironically.