or him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed
and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had
foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped
from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed
itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own
nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.

She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them,
laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her
unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible
for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have
married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady
Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had
to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.

That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that
sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still.
But Edith insisted that she would make no difference.

"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's
absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--"

He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it
turns out to my advantage."

"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll
play to me."

He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her
was the one thing he could do, and he did it well.

He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys
with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific?
Or loud and strong?"

"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud."

"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake
the dead."

That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself
loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour.
The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble
piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too,
triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It
was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the
miracle that he alone could accomplish for her.

And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the
dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of
Chopin, the most immor