Page:The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916).pdf/237

Rh rose at once; the three rose with her and stood while she went out. She went upstairs and looked in upon her father; he wanted nothing, and after a conversation with him as short as she could make it, she came down again. No further disagreement between the two men, apparently, had happened after she left the table. Avery now was not visible. Eaton and Blatchford were in the music-room; as she went to them, she saw that Eaton had some sheets of music in his hand. So now, with a repugnance against her father's orders which she had never felt before, she began to carry out the instructions her father had given her.

"You play, Mr. Eaton?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not," he smiled.

"Really don't you?"

"Only drum a little sometimes, Miss Santoine. Won't you play? Please do."

She saw that they were songs which he had been examining. "Oh, you sing!"

He could not effectively deny it. She sat down at her piano and ran over the songs and selections from the new opera. He followed her with the delight of a music-lover long away from an instrument. He sang with her a couple of the songs; he had a good, unassuming tone. And as she went through the music, she noticed that he was familiar with almost everything she had liked which had been written or was current up to five years before; all later music was strange to him. To this extent he had been of her world, plainly, up to five years before; then he had gone out of it.

She realized this only as something which she was to report to her father; yet she felt a keener, more personal