the injured departure of Cora, following her sister. At the door,
Cora, without pausing, threw him a look over her shoulder: a
full-eyed shot of frankest hatred.

A few moments later, magnificent chords sounded through the house.
The piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the
keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered;
they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so
they sang--and from out among the chords there stole an errant
melody. This was not "piano-playing" and not a pianist's
triumphant nimbleness--it was music. Art is the language of a
heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was
speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful,
something that might have welled up in the breast of a young girl
standing at twilight in an April orchard. It was the inexpressible
made into sound, an improvisation by a master player.

"You hear what she's up to?" said Hedrick, turning his head at
last. But his mother had departed.

He again extended himself flat upon the floor, face downward, this
time as a necessary preliminary to rising after a manner of his
own invention. Mysteriously he became higher in the middle, his
body slowly forming first a round and then a pointed arch, with
forehead, knees, and elbows touching the floor. A brilliantly
executed manoeuvre closed his Gothic period, set him upright and
upon his feet; then, without ostentation, he proceeded to the
kitchen, where he found his mother polishing a sugar-bowl.

He challenged her with a damnatory gesture in the direction of the