Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/253

 my unconscious assumption of your familiarity with all my antecedents. I can't get over the impression that I have known you all my life."

"And that reminds me that I started to say something to you yesterday that was perfectly ridiculous, but caught myself in time."

"I wish you had said it."

"Mrs. Durham is a great flatterer of those she loves. She thinks I can play. But I'm the veriest amateur."

"Let me be the judge."

She was looking over her music, and he had opened the piano.

"I'll play for you with pleasure. Sit there in that big arm chair. I'm sorry I tired you so early in the day with my chatter."

And before he could protest her fingers were touching the piano with the ease of the born musician.

He sat enraptured as he watched the sinuous grace with which her fingers touched the ivory keys and heard their answering cry which seemed the breath of her own soul in echo.

She had an easy apparently careless touch. To old familiar music she gave a charm that was new, adding something indefinable to the musician's thought that gave luminous power to its interpretation. He had no knowledge of the technique of music, but now he knew that she was improvising. The piano was the voice of her own beautiful soul, and it was pulsing with a tenderness that melted him to tears.

Suddenly the music ceased, and she turned her face full on his before he could brush away a big tear that rolled down. She flushed, closed the piano, and quietly resumed her place by his side.

"And, now, you haven't told me how well I played. You're the first young man so careless."