"rag-time," nor "The Storm."

"Oh, do you play?" he asked constrainedly.

Billy shook her head.

"Not much. Only little bits of things, you know," she said wistfully, as
she turned toward the door.

For some minutes after she had gone, Cyril stood where she had left him,
his eyes moody and troubled.

"I suppose I might have played--something," he muttered at last;
"but--'The Maiden's Prayer'!--good heavens!"

Billy was a little shy with Cyril when he came down to dinner that
night. For the next few days, indeed, she held herself very obviously
aloof from him. Cyril caught himself wondering once if she were afraid
of his "nerves." He did not try to find out, however; he was too
emphatically content that of her own accord she seemed to be leaving him
in peace.

It must have been a week after Billy's visit to the top of the house
that Cyril stopped his playing very abruptly one day, and opened his
door to go down-stairs. At the first step he started back in amazement.

"Why, Billy!" he ejaculated.

The girl was sitting very near the top of the stairway. At his
appearance she got to her feet shamefacedly.

"Why, Billy, what in the world are you doing there?"

"Listening."

"Listening!"

"Yes. Do you mind?"

The man did not answer. He was too surprised to find words at once, and
he was trying to recollect what he had been playing.

"You see, listening to music this way isn't like listening to--to
talking," hurried on Billy, feverishly. "It isn't sneaking like that; is
it?"

"Why--no."

"And you don't mind?"

"Why, surely, I ought not to mind--that," he admitted.

"Then I can keep right on as I have done. Thank you," sighed Billy, in
relief.

"Keep right on! Have you been here before?"

"Why, yes, lots of days. And, say, Mr. Cyril, what is that--that thing
that's all chords with big bass notes that keep saying something so fine
and splendid that it marches on and on, getting bigger and grander, just
as if there couldn't anything stop it, until it all ends in one great
burst of triumph? Mr. Cyril, what is that?"

"Why, Billy!"--the interest this time in the man's face was not
faint--"I wish I might make others catch my meaning as I have evidently
made you do it! That's something of my own--that I'm writing, you
understand; and I've tried to say--just what you say you heard."

"And I did hear it--I did! Oh, won't you play it, please, with the door
open?"

"I can't, Billy. I'm sorry, indeed I a