them would make her start and tremble.

She did her best, however, to hide this side of her nature even from him.
And it was not difficult. She remained childishly immature and backward
in many things. She was a personality; that was clear; one could hardly
say that she was or had a character. She was a bundle of loves and hates;
a force, not an organism; and her father was often as much puzzled by her
as anyone else.

Music perhaps was the only study which ever conquered her indolence. Here
it happened that a famous musician, who settled in Cambridge for a time,
came across her gift and took notice of it. And to please him she worked
with industry, even with doggedness. Brahms, Chopin, Wagner--these great
romantics possessed her in music as Shelley or Rossetti did in poetry.
"You little demon, Laura! How do you come to play like that?" a girl
friend--her only intimate friend--said to her once in despair. "It's the
expression. Where do you get it? And I practise, and you don't; it's not
fair."

"Expression!" said Laura, with annoyance, "what does that matter? That's
the amateur all over. Of course I play like that because I can't do it
any better. If I could _play the notes_"--she clenched her little hand,
with a curious, almost a fierce energy--"if I had any technique--or was
ever likely to have any, what should I want with expression? Any cat can
give you expression! There was one under my window last night--you should
just have heard it!"

Molly Friedland, the girl friend, shrugged her shoulders. She was as
soft, as normal, as self-controlled, as Laura was wilful and irritable.
But there was a very real affection between them.