Thyrza started, so perceptibly that Lydia asked her what was the matter.

‘Nothing,’ she answered, moving as if to seat herself more comfortably.  But henceforth her eyes were fixed in one direction, on a point down in the body of the hall.  She no longer replied to the remarks of either of her companions.  The flush remained warm upon her cheeks.

‘Thyrza!’ whispered Gilbert, when the musicians were in their places, and the preliminary twanging and screeching of instruments under correction had begun.  ‘There’s Mr. Egremont!’

‘Is he?  Where?’

’Do you see that tall lady in the red cloak?  No, more to the left; there’s a bald man on the other side of him.’

‘Yes, I see him.’

She waited a moment, then repeated the news to Lydia, with singular indifference.  Then she began to gaze in quite other directions.  The instrumental uproar continued.

‘Oh dear!’ said Lydia, with a wry face.  I’m sure that kind of music won’t do your head any good.  Is it still better?’

‘I think so—­yes, yes.’

‘Grandad doesn’t take anything like that time to tune his fiddle,’ the other whispered, conscious that she was daring in her criticism.

Thyrza, on an impulse, conveyed the remark to Gilbert, who laughed silently.

The concert began.  Thyrza’s eyes had again fixed themselves on that point down below, and during the first piece they did not once move.  Her breathing was quick.  The heart in her bosom seemed to swell, as always when some great emotion possessed her, and with difficulty she kept her vision unclouded.  Lydia often looked at her, so did Gilbert; she was unconscious of it.

‘Did you like that?’ Gilbert asked her when the piece was over.

‘Yes, very much.’

She had leaned back.  Lydia sought her hand; she received a pressure in return, but the other hand did not remain, as she expected it would.

Gilbert himself was not much disposed to speak.  He, too, was moved in the secret places of his being—­moved to that ominous tumult of conflicting joy and pain which in the finer natures comes of music intensely heard.  He had been at concerts before, but had little anticipated that he would ever attend one in such a mood as was his to-night.  It seemed to him that he had not yet realised his happiness, that in his most rapturous moments he had rated it but poorly, unimaginatively.  The strong wings of that glorious wordless song bore him into a finer air, where his faculties of mind and heart grew unconditioned.  If it were possible to go back into the world endowed as in these moments!  To the greatest man has come the same transfiguration, the same woe of foreseen return to limits.  But one thing was real and would not fail him.  She who sat by him was his—­his now and for ever.  Why had he yet loved her so little?

The second piece began.  Again Thyrza looked down into the hall.  After a while there came a piece of vocal music.  The singer was not of much reputation, but to Thyrza her voice seemed more than human.  In the interval which followed she whispered to Lydia: