music; it was deep and sweet and luring. It was like the golden hair of the Princess Lettice lowered from her casement to her lover. It was like the silver feet of laughter twinkling up a beanstal

ely distant until i

scarlet that weltered across floor and ceiling f

ere?" he

escaped from a door which had been left ajar. It was from there that the voice was calling. Steadying himself with his

o that. You do it too oft

ce on yo

ly once. Yo

romi

across their shoulders their heads had drawn a little apart. Her hands, resting on the keyboard, were hel

of humor; the lips were full and kind; the eyes blue and impatient His complexion was high and his hair flaxen; his bearing sensitive and a little se

gue as a sea-cloud, now flashing like sudden gleams of blue-gray sunlight Her hair was the color of ancient bronze-dark in the hollows and burnished at the edges. Her throat was her glory-full and young, throbbing like a bird's and slender as the stalk of a flower. It was her mouth that gave the key to her character. It could be any shap

n troubled when first they rested on him, brightened. Her lips relaxed. Like a bubble rising from

here did you get him? And w

, she knelt beside him, bringing her face down to his level. As i

nny," she said. "Whe

't see his hands; they only reached to where his elbows ought to have been. He couldn't see his feet; a yard of pink stuff draped them. He had had to kilt it to make his way along the passage. But the garment's chief offense, as he regarded it, was that it was a woman's: a rather stout middle-aged woman's-the sort of woman who had given up tr

id you c

ed

arly to be in bed? Per

g aside and trying to keep the tears back. "I

rstand. Poor old

she held him. He could feel the beating of her heart and the slow movement of her breath.

ke to see what you look like. And no

e whispered. "Pl

to make him jealous. Turning to the child, she lowered her voice, "You'll catch cold if you don't get

bet

kiss

n left his seat to follow. She paused in the doorway, gazing ac

Vas

d no. There's some one else to-ni

the passage which had been full of fears without her, her act seemed symbolic. Gazing back from her arms, he saw the man-saw the perplexed humiliation of his expression, his aloneness and instinctively his tragedy, yet without pity and rather with contentment In later years all that happened to him seemed a refinement of spiritua