She readily acquiesced, and seating herself at the grand piano, which was open, soon scored a triumph. Her playing was exquisitely finished, and as her fingers glided over the keys, the consciousness that she was discoursing music to at least one or two persons who understood and appreciated it gave her increased tenderness of touch and beauty of tone. The dreary feeling of utter hopelessness which had pervaded her, body and soul, when playing to her father and mother, “Ma” asleep on the sofa, and “Pa” hidden behind a newspaper, neither of them knowing or caring what composer’s work she performed, was changed to a warm, happy sense of the power to give pleasure, and the ability to succeed--and when she had finished a delicately wild little sonata of Grieg’s, pressing its soft, half-sobbing final chord as daintily and hushfully as she would have folded a child’s hands in sleep, a murmur of real rapture and surprised admiration came from all her hearers. “But you are an artiste!” exclaimed the Baroness Rousillon. “You are a professional _virtuoso_, surely?” “Spare me such an accusation!” laughed Diana. “I don’t think I _could_ play to an audience for money,--it would seem like selling my soul.” “Ah, there I can’t follow you,” said Chauvet. “That’s much too high-flown and romantic for me. Why not sell anything if you can find buyers?” His little eyes glittered ferret-like between his secretive eyelids, and Diana smiled, seeing that he spoke ironically. “This is an age of selling,” he went on. “The devil might buy souls by the bushel if he wanted them!--(and if there _were_ such a person!) And as for music!--why, it’s as good for sale and barter nowadays as a leg of mutton! The professional musician is as eager for gain as any other merchant in the general market,--and if the spirit of Sappho sang him a song from the Elysian fields, he’d sell it to a gramophone agency for the highest bid. And _you_ talk about ‘selling your soul!’ dear Madame, with a thousand pardons for my _brusquerie_, you talk nonsense! How do you know you have a soul to sell?” Before she could reply, Dimitrius interposed,--his face was shadowed by a stern gravity. “No jesting with that subject, Professor!” he said. “You know my opinions. Sacred things are not suited for ordinary talk,--the issues are too grave,--the realities too absolute.” Chauvet coughed a little cough of embarrassment, and took out a pair of spectacles from his pocket, polished them and put them back again for want of something else to do. The Marchese Farnese looked up,--his expression was eager and watchful--he was on the alert. But nothing came of his expectancy. “Play to us again, Miss May,” continued Dimitrius in gentler accents. “You need be under no doubt as to the existence of _your_ soul when you can express it so harmoniously.”