And then Helen, to carry on the conversation, added, “I should be very much pleased if you would.”

“I am afraid it is an ungracious task Mrs. Roberts has chosen me,” the man answered, smiling.  “Critics are not a popular race.”

“It depends upon the critics,” said Helen.  “They must be sincere.”

“That is just where they get into trouble,” was the response.

“It looks as if he were going to be chary with his praise,” thought Helen, feeling just the least bit uncomfortable.  She thought for a moment, and then said, not without truth, “You pique my curiosity, Mr. Howard.”

“My criticism could not be technical,” said the other, smiling, again, “for I am not a pianist.”

“You play some other instrument?” asked Helen; afterwards she added, mischievously, “or are you just a critic?”

“I play the violin,” the man answered.

“You are going to play for us this evening?”

“No,” said the other, “I fear I shall not.”

“Why not?” Helen inquired.

“I have not been feeling very well to-day,” was the response.  “But I have promised your aunt to play some evening; we had quite a long dispute.”

“You do not like to play in public?” asked Helen.

The question was a perfectly natural one, but it happened unfortunately that as the girl asked it her glance rested upon the figure of her companion.  The man chanced to look at her at the same instant, and she saw in a flash that her thought had been misread.  Helen colored with the most painful mortification; but Mr. Howard gave, to her surprise, no sign of offense.

“No, not in general,” he said, with simple dignity.  “I believe that I am much better equipped as a listener.”

Helen had never seen more perfect self-possession than that, and she felt quite humbled.

It would have been difficult to guess the age of the man beside her, but Helen noticed that his hair was slightly gray.  A closer view had only served to strengthen her first impression of him, that he was all head, and she found herself thinking that if that had been all of him he might have been handsome, tho in a strange, uncomfortable way.  The broad forehead seemed more prominent than ever, and the dark eyes seemed fairly to shine from beneath it.  The rest of the face, tho wan, was as powerful and massive as the brow, and seemed to Helen, little used as she was to think of such things, to indicate character as well as suffering.

“It looks a little like Arthur’s,” she thought.

This she had been noticing in the course of the conversation; then, because her curiosity had really been piqued, she brought back the original topic again.  “You have not told me about my playing,” she smiled, “and I wish for your opinion.  I am very vain, you know.”  (There is wisdom in avowing a weakness which you wish others to think you do not possess.)

“It gave me great pleasure to watch you,” said the man, after a moment.