Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/133

 disastrous test again, prematurely; and above all, he was fighting for his transcendentalism and wilfully in awe of his ideal.

He rose from the music bench and began to walk about the room, trying to overcome his agitation. He did not know himself, and he was bewildered by the loss of his self-control. His under-jaw was trembling in his cheek; his throat ached. When she looked at him over her shoulder, with her hands lingering on the last notes, he was so pale and distressed that she cried: "What's the matter? Are you ill?"

"No, no," he stammered. "I'm"

"What is it?" She came over to him. He was standing beside a chair, wiping the moist palm of his hand on his coat sleeve in a fumbling nervousness that alarmed her. She took him by the wrist, to stop him. "What is it?" He put his other arm about her shoulders and drew her to him, his face twitching; and he frightened her so that she stepped back at once, confused, and blushing, and concerned for him.

After a helpless silence, he said, "I'm—all right. . . . I was dizzy." He looked at the chair beside him. "I guess I'll sit down."

She returned to the piano and began to play again to cover her bewilderment. They passed the rest of the evening with the width of the room between them. And he replied to her with a laboured deliberation, pausing in the middle of his sentences to take breath, in a way that reminded her of an amateur singer's faulty "phrasing."