Page:Solo (1924).pdf/183

 the shrewdness of her instinct and naïveté of her opinions, all conspired to charm Paul. He sat back in his chair and smoked, utterly free from care.

Through talking about school they reached the subject of music.

"Do you play?" asked Paul.

She nodded her head.

"Have you a piano?"

"Only an organ."

He rose. "Then come in the other room and play for me."

She required coaxing, but ended by sitting on a horsehair stool and pumping out a monotonous version of a waltz called "Myosotis." Every now and then she remembered to change the bass. Paul concentrated his attention on the line which undulated from the nape of her neck to her round elbow, then thanked her and asked permission to play.

She relinquished the stool, and in a few moments he had forgotten his surroundings, as he strayed from one composition to another, improvising where memory failed, adjusting his performance to the crying limitations of the instrument.

The smell of roses came in through an open window. In a corner of a mirror on which daisies had been painted and half washed off he could see a glint of golden hair. Before he realized it, he was in the midst of a Bach prelude—in church, playing with an exalted faith in the music, and Phœbe Meddar was his audience. Wistfully he recalled his old conception of music as a universal language that should enlighten and unify the world. What a disparate thing the world had become since those naïve days! Yet there was a unity; his present mood and setting were strangely reminiscent of others. Out of a long submerged set of associations came the memory of afternoons when he had posed as a grown-up virtuoso