But now, even with all her morning's work done and Richard started on his way, she was not at peace. His playing disturbed her, not because the piano was old and gave forth so many painful sounds, but because music had sad associations. She believed that it roused strange passions in the human heart, that it made men and women queer, abnormal, sometimes even wicked. It was connected in her mind with a quality called "genius" which animated the minds of poets and musicians and artists and made them a little more than human and at the same time a good deal less. It was a general conviction among quiet people of the time that those who could write or paint or sing beyond a mere amateur excellence were "wild," like poor Mr. Poe, about whom a tradition lingered among her Baltimore cousins. Genius was not a necessary part of greatness; her father and her husband were great men, but they were also sober, dignified, comprehensible, reasonable, which geniuses were not. Thomasina Davis had wrong ideas and she put them into Richard's head. She had spent all but three years of her life in Waltonville, but those three in New York, under the instruction of a famous pianist, had made her wish to be a concert player. Fortunately family duties had called her home, and now, those duties long since done, she lived alone in the homestead set back in the garden on the street which led to the college. While she condemned Thomasina, Mrs. Lister remembered with a stirring of the heart all the hundreds of times she had pressed her latch. Thomasina had three pupils; Cora Scott, who attained technical correctness; Eleanor Bent, who played with all the imperfect brilliancy of one who learns easily; and Richard, who attained both correctness and brilliancy. Mrs. Lister explained to strangers that Thomasina did not need to give lessons; she blushed when her quarterly bill arrived, and shivered when she heard her talk to Richard about playing. "You must read poetry, Richard, and _feel_ it; that is the way and the only way for youth to gain emotional experience. 'Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardor, else no amulet.' When you have learned to feel, then you can play." Richard was not a genius--thank God! It seemed impossible that he should be graduating; that he should be no longer her lovely, placid baby, who had done so much to heal an old hurt. Though he would have to go away for a few years for further study, he would come back to teach in the college and would perhaps some day be its president, like his father and grandfather. Then she could stay on in the house which was like the outer shell of her soul, not to leave it until she left this life. Richard might marry--ought to marry--a pretty, biddable girl like Cora Scott. Cora would do her duty by her mother-in-law.