Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/87

Rh "Do you ever sing?"

"Only when I'm all alone." The color rushed for an instant to Kirk’s cheeks, why, he could not have said.

Without a word, the old gentleman, still holding Kirk's hands, pushed him gently into the chair he had himself been sitting in. There was a little time of stillness, ﬁlled only by the crack and rustle of the ﬁre. Then, into the silence, crept the ﬁrst dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude—climbing higher and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last into the ﬁnal solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old gentleman turned on the piano-stool to ﬁnd Kirk weeping passionately and silently into the cushions of the big chair.

"Have I done more than I meant?" he questioned himself, "or is it only the proof?" His hands on Kirk's quivering shoulders, he asked, "What is it?"

Kirk sat up, ashamed, and wondering why he had cried.