reat, stared at
him without recognition.

"Allo, Tommy; here I am," Joyselle began, taking the boy's hand. "Come
to scold you for being ill and worrying us all."

"I don't want you--not that it isn't very kind of you to come. I
want--him. And he won't come."

Joyselle frowned at Brigit, who was about to speak. "Well--I am going to
play for you, and it may amuse you till he does come."

He tuned his violin and began to play.

Brigit sat down by the bed and laid her hand in Tommy's.

It was a simple nursery melody that Joyselle played:

"_Il etait une bergere, he ron ron ron, petit pa-ta-pon_----" She had
known it all her life, but to Tommy, who had always sternly refused to
have anything to do with the French governesses his mother had got for
him, it was new.

He listened with an intent frown, the fingers of his left hand curled
inwards and moving as though he were trying to follow the air on
imaginary strings.

Then as Joyselle went on to the delightful Pont d'Avignon, his hand
relaxed, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

The room was nearly dark, and rain beat in gusts on the windows.

"_Fais dodo_," sang the fiddle softly, "_fais dodo._"

"I like that. Play it again. Ah, Master--it is you. I am so glad----"

Joyselle did not stop, but he smiled down at the boy as he played on
very softly. "Of course it is I. I am delighted to see you so much
better. Do you know 'Ma Normandie'? This is it----"

Tommy moved a little and settled his head more comfortably.

The boudoir was in an angle of the house opposite to which, a floor
higher, was the gallery. As he played, someone in the picture-gallery
turned on the electric lights, and one long shaft, coming through the
window, shone down on the player's head.

"See the Halo, Bicky?" asked the boy in a natural voice. "Isn't he
splendid?" Then he added, with the frown she so dreaded: "Take me away
before they begin to clap, will you?"

"No clapping allowed, Tommy," Joyselle assured him quietly. "Know this?"

And he played on.

His face, full of tender solicitude, was, Brigit thought, almost
divinely beautiful as she watched it. And by some curious freak of the
down-falling light only his head and shoulders were visible, and seemed
almost to be floating in the gloom. Never had he been so handsome, and
never so pitilessly remote. He had forgotten her; he had forgotten love;
he was not even the Musician--he was a Healer, a being miles above and
beyond her an