s very young, and in the splendour of the magnificent morning she
looked the emblem of simplicity; but in her heart she was his mother, his
sole fount of wisdom and energy and shrewdness.

Pain showed in his sensitive features, and then appeal, and then a hot
determination.

"I came because I could not work," he said.

"Because you couldn't work? Why couldn't you work?" There was no yielding
in her hard voice.

"I don't know! I don't know! I suppose it is because you are not there,
because you have made yourself necessary to me; or," he corrected quickly,
"because _I_ have made you necessary to myself. Oh! I can practise for so
many hours per day. But it is useless. It is not authentic practice. I
think not of the music. It is as if some other person was playing, with my
arm, on my violin. I am not there. I am with you, where you are. It is the
same day after day, every day, every day. I am done for. I am convinced
that I am done for. These concerts will infallibly be my ruin, and I shall
be shamed before all Paris."

"And did you come to England to tell me this?"

"Yes."

She was relieved, for she had thought of another explanation of his
escapade, and had that explanation proved to be the true one, she was very
ready to make unpleasantness to the best of her ability. Nevertheless,
though relieved in one direction, she was gravely worried in another. She
had undertaken the job of setting Musa grandiosely on his artistic career,
and the difficulties of it were growing more and more complex and
redoubtable.

She said:

"But you seemed so jolly when you arrived last night. Nobody would have
guessed you had a care in the world."

"I had not," he replied eagerly, "as soon as I saw you. The surprise of
seeing you--it was that.... And you left Paris without saying good-bye! Why
did you leave Paris without saying good-bye? Never since the moment when I
learnt that you had gone have I had the soul to practise. My violin became
a wooden box; my fingers, too, were of wood."

He stopped. The dog sniffed round.

Audrey was melting in bliss. She could feel herself dissolving. Her
pleasure was terrible. It was true that she had left Paris without saying
good-bye to Musa. She had done it on purpose. Why? She did not know.
Perhaps out of naughtiness, perhaps.... She was aware that she could be
hard, like her father. But she was glad, intensely glad, that she had left
Paris so, because the result had been this avowal. She