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 Many a time, now, the old childhood dreams came back to Hester, and her fingers would drift into tender melodies and minor chords not on the printed page, until all the stifled love and longing of those dreary, colorless years of the past found voice at her finger-tips.

The stately marches and the rollicking dances of the cloud music came easily at her beck and call—now grave, now gay; now slow and measured, now tripping in weird harmonies and gay melodies.

Hester's blood quickened and her cheeks grew pink. Her eyes lost their yearning look and her lips their wistful curves.

Every week she faithfully took her lesson of Penelope, and she practiced only that when the children were about. It was when they were at school and she was alone that the great joy of this new-found treasure of improvising came to her, and she could set free her heart and soul on the ivory keys.

She was playing thus one night—forgetting time, self, and that Penelope would soon be home from school—when the child entered the house and stopped, amazed, in the parlor