oors for
nearly two days had had too little exercise and too many good things to
eat. They were quite cross and irrepressible. John had the fidgets.
He couldn't even stay in the same room for more than a minute, and he
wouldn't even try sitting down for a change. Lucy had had to give up
at least a dozen things that required dry weather and sunshine. She
seemed to take the rain as something directed particularly against
herself by malicious persons. Evelyn, also cross and nervous, was on
the point of retiring to her own room to write letters. Just then
Dawson Cooper telephoned to know if she cared to take a little walk in
the rain and she accepted with alacrity.

"It's gotten so that he only has to whistle," said Lucy petulantly,
when Evelyn had gone. "I think she's made up her mind to be landed."

Fulton came and went. Every now and then he dropped on the piano-stool
for a few moments and made the instrument roar and thunder; once he
played something peaceful and sad and even, in which one voice with
tears in it ran away from another.

The piano was in the next room, and whenever it began to sound, Lucy
dropped her work into her lap and listened. At such time she had an
alert, startled look. She resembled a fawn when it hears a stick snap
in the forest.

We heard him leave the piano, cross the hall and go into the
dining-room.

"He's hardly touched his piano in years," said Lucy. "But now he's at
it in fits and starts from morning till night. Night before last when
the rain began he got up and went down in his bare feet and played for
hours. I had to fetch him and make him come back to bed."

Then she seemed to feel that an explanation was necessary. She bent
rosily over the work, and said: "We don't want the servants to know."

Again the piano began to ripple and thunder. Again we heard John go
into the dining-room.

I must have lifted an eyebrow, for Lucy said:

"Yes. I'm afraid so, but it doesn't seem to go to his head. Oh," she
said, "it wrings my heart, but I haven't the right to say anything."

"Lucy," I said, "have you thought out anything since I saw you last?"

"I think in circles," she said; "one minute I'm for doing my duty to
him, the next minute I can only think of myself. It _can't_ be right
for me to be his wife when I've stopped being--Oh, anything but awfully
fond of him."

"You _are_ that?"

"Of course I am."

"It's just about the saddest thing that ever came to my k