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ask herself, whether it was that he admired her and was willing that she should know it, or whether it was that he was sorry for her. The one was almost as absurd and incensing as the other, yet, as she talked and laughed, making Celia and Norah laugh with her, she grew more and more aware of her unhappiness. It was as if something passed between her and the silent stranger; as if she could not keep something from him. He heard, as well as she, that her laughter rang false; he as well as she knew that grief burned in her heart. There was a complicity of consciousness between them, for he, too, was un-happy and he, too, knew that she knew it.

She would have liked to escape, to evade the practice, when tea was over, but Celia had brought out her violin and when Norah said: ‘I must be about my work;—will you stay and listen, Uncle Godfrey?—Do you mind his listening?’ it was settled, with no word said, that he was to stay and she not to mind playing the Brahms sonata to him. He changed his seat as she and Celia took their places. He moved into Celia’s vacated corner of the sofa, where it was true that he could listen more comfortably but where, also, he could continue to look at her as she sat in profile to him at the piano. But, when they began to play, she saw that he was