As she rose and left the piano he observed how young she was, how graceful in her trailing dress. The forced housing of these weeks of Gardiner's illness had quieted the restless spirit. Mrs. Carew was womanly to him, feminine for the first time since his arrival. It was at the end of his tongue to say, "Why did you ever marry that man?" He thought with keen dislike of the husband whose appearance would close the piano, silence the charming voice, and drive his aunt to find occupation in the shops and in charities. He became too chivalrous. "Flow gently, sweet Afton," as sung by her, echoed thence afterwards in his mind all his life. The melody was stored in the chambers of his memory, and whenever, in later years, he tried not to recall 700 Madison Avenue, and the inhospitable home, maddeningly and plaintively these tunes would come: "Roll on, silver moon," that too. How that moon rolled and hung in the pale sky of remembrance, whose colour and hue is more enchanting than ever were Italian skies! Mrs. Carew had an audience composed of two people. Little Gardiner, up and dressed in his flannel gown, and the big cousin fathering him with a protecting arm, both in the sofa corner. Mrs. Carew's mellow voice on those winter afternoons before Bella returned, before Mr. Carew came back from the Club, flowed and quavered and echoed sweetly through the room. In the twilight, before the gas came, with old-fashioned stars set in the candelabra, the touching pathos of the ballads spoke to the romantic Fairfax ... spoke to his twenty-three years and spoke dangerously. He became more and more chivalrous and considered his aunt a misunderstood and unloved woman. Long, long afterwards, a chord, a note, was sufficient to bring before him the square drawing-room with its columns, furnish with an agglomeration of gaudy, rich, fantastic things expressive of her uncertain taste. He saw again the long dark piano and the silhouette of the woman behind it, graceful, shadowy, and felt the pressure against his arm of little Gardiner, as they two sat sympathetically lifted to an emotional pitch, stirred as only the music of a woman's voice in love-songs can stir a man's heart. Bella came back and there was an end of the concerts. A charm to keep Bella silent had not yet been found, unless that charm were a book. "She could not read when mother sang," she said, "and more than that, it made her cry." And when Mr. Carew's latchkey scratched in the door, Bella flew upstairs to the top story, Antony and Gardiner followed more slowly; Mrs. Carew shut her piano, and took the cars again to forget her restlessness in the purchase of silks and dry goods and house decorations, and was far from guessing the emotion she had aroused in the breast of her nephew--"Flow gently, sweet Afton." Nothing flowed gently in Fairfax's impetuous breast. Nothing flowed gently on the tide of events that drifted past slowly, leaving him unsuccessful, without any opening into fame.