Pulling out the heavy curtain, Laurence paused, for an unwonted sound saluted his ears, to which, at first, they refused credence. He opened the door quietly. The sound continued. The keys of the piano were struck so softly that they gave forth little more than the echo of a melody. His fairy-lady sat at the instrument; and, so absorbed was she in the making of this dainty music, that the young man had crossed the room and leaned his elbows on the edge of the flat piano-case opposite to her before she looked up at him. Nor, meeting his eyes, did she leave playing, but let her fingers still draw forth that procession of slender phrases from the discoloured, ivory notes--phrases not only exquisitely refined, but with a tremulous _coquetterie_ in them, the music of some polite and graceful minuet, in which Boucher's fine fanciful, little figures of lover and mistress, courtier and prince, painted upon the satin-wood escritoire, might have moved and postured, with a hundred pretty arts and invitations at the court of Louis the Fifteenth, over a century ago. The fine-drawn, little melody, and all its suggestions of past intrigues, heart-burnings, elegant if questionable joys, and luxurious living, knocked at the door of the listener's heart with rather perilous pathos, notwithstanding his stern humour. Agnes Rivers's eyes too, as she looked steadily at him, were at once grave with thought and beseeching as those of a child, covetous of a possible pleasure, yet ready to swallow its poor tears should that pleasure be denied. Her lips were parted, but she did not speak. She only gazed and gazed at him--while still calling forth those frail and courteous harmonies--as though she sought to penetrate the most hidden recesses of his nature. And all this worked strongly upon Laurence, stirring in him memories of just such hot evenings, when, with windows set wide upon the fragrant garden, and the wild brightness of the summer lightning pulsing--as now--upon the far horizon, they had sat together making music, she and he, nearly a hundred years back. That first love of theirs had been shattered by cruel calamity of wounds and death. It had never found its consummation; and now the ache of its frustration was added to the ache of the present--of his passion so strongly held in check during the last many weeks; of his long-sustained effort, now touching on attainment; of his so recently made resolution to let honour go by the wall rather than again be defrauded of his love. At length he could no longer endure the playful, yet in a way tragical, music, nor the sustained scrutiny of those grave yet wistful eyes.