But at this moment the first movement of Op. 999 came to a perfect and well thought out conclusion, bearing in mind everything that had been said on six pages of ideas faultlessly interchanged by four instruments, and making due allowance for all exceptions each had courteously taken to the other. But Op. 999 was going on to the second movement directly, and only tolerated a pause for a few string-tightenings and trial-squeaks, to get in tune, and the removal of a deceased fly from a piano-candle. The remark from the back-room that we could hear beautifully in here seemed to fall flat, the second violin merely replying "All right!" passionlessly. The instruments then asked each other if they were ready, and answered yes. Then some one counted four suggestively, for a start, and life went on again. Mrs. Nightingale and Fenwick sat well on into the music before either spoke. He, resolved not to seem to seek or urge any information at all; all was to come spontaneously from her. She, feeling the difficulty of telling what she had to tell, and always oppressed with the recollection of what it had cost her to make her revelation to this selfsame man nineteen years ago. She wished he would give the conversation some lift, as he had done before, when he asked if what she had to tell referred to her husband. But, although he would gladly have repeated his assistance, he could see his way to nothing, this time, that seemed altogether free from risk. How if he were to blunder into ascribing to her something more culpable than her actual share in the past? She half guessed this; then, seeing that speech must come from herself in the end, took heart and faced the position resolutely. She always did. "You know this, Fenwick, do you not, that when there is a divorce, the husband takes the children from their mother--always, when she is in the wrong; too often, when she is blameless. I have told you I was the one to blame, and I tell you now that though my husband's application for a divorce failed, from a technical point of law, all things came about just as though he had succeeded. Don't analyse it now; take it all for granted--you understand?" "I understand. Suppose it so! And then?" "And then this. That little monkey of mine--that little unconscious fiddling thing in there"--and as Mrs. Nightingale speaks, the sound of a caress mixes with the laugh in her voice; but the pain comes back as she goes on--"My Sallykin has been mine, all her life! My poor husband never saw her in her childhood." As she says the word _husband_ she has again a vivid _eclat_ of the consciousness that it is he--himself--sitting there beside her. And the odd thought that mixes itself into this, strange to say, is--"The pity of it! To think how little he has had of Sally in all these years!"