both. In the last few weeks she had had ample opportunity for
judging. She perceived that a heavy shadow lay upon him darkening
his home-coming--she had pictured it so very differently, and she
sighed over the futility of anticipation. His happiness meant to
her so much that she raged at her inability to help him. Until he
spoke she could do nothing. And she knew that he would never
speak. The nightly occupation lost its usual zest, so she shuffled
the cards absently and began a fresh game.

Gillian was on the hearthrug, Houston's head in her lap. She leant
against Miss Craven's chair, dreaming as she had dreamt in the old
convent until the sudden lifting of the dog's head under her hands
made her aware of Peters standing beside her. He looked down
silently on the card table for a few moments, pointed with a
nicotine-stained finger to a move Miss Craven had missed and then
wandered across the room and sat down at the piano. For a while
his hands moved silently over the keys, then he began to play, and
his playing was exquisite. Gillian sat and marvelled. Peters and
music had seemed widely apart. He had appeared so essentially a
sportsman; in spite of the literary tendency that his sympathetic
account of the Elizabethan Barry Craven had suggested she had
associated him with rougher, more physical pursuits. He was
obviously an out-door man; a gun seemed a more natural complement
to his hands than the sensitive keys of a piano, his thick rather
clumsy fingers manifestly incompatible with the delicate touch
that was filling the room with wonderful harmony. It was a check
to her cherished theory which she acknowledged reluctantly. But
she forgot to theorise in the sheer joy of listening.

"Why did he not make music a career?" she whispered, under cover