harpsichord; even if he did not play on it much, it would be a
beautiful, characteristic piece of furniture.... And it would be a good
idea to ask Mr. Innes to bring all his queer instruments to Berkeley
Square, and give a concert to-morrow night after his dinner-party. His
friends had bored him with Hungarian bands, and the improvisations the
bands had been improvising for the last ten years, and he saw no reason
why he should not bore them, just for a change, with Mr. Innes.

At this moment his reflections were interrupted by Mr. Innes, who wanted
to know if he did not agree with him regarding the necessity for the
re-introduction of the monochord, if the sixteenth century masses were
ever to be sung again properly. All this was old story to Evelyn. In a
sort of dream, through a sort of mist, she saw the embroidered waistcoat
and the gold moustache, and when the small, grey, smiling eyes were
raised from her father's face and looked at her, a delicious sensation
penetrated through the very tissues of her flesh, and she experienced
the tremor of a decisive moment; and then there came again a gentle
sense of delicious bewilderment and illusion.

She did not know how it would all happen, but her life seemed for the
first time to have come to a definite issue. The very moment he had
spoken of Madame Savelli, the great singing mistress, it was as if a
light had begun in her brain, and she saw a faint horizon line; she
seemed to see Paris from afar; she knew she would go there to study, and
that night she had fallen asleep listening to the applause of three
thousand hands.

But she did not like to stand before him, offering him first the cup of
tea, then the milk and sugar, then the cake, and bread and butter. Her
repugnance had nothing to do with him; it was an obscure feeling, quite