"Have you not had plenty?" she asked wearily.
"Music! You call that music?"
She did not answer; something in her voice, her attitude, seemed to show that she was shedding tears. He was intensely sorry for her trouble, whatever it might be; but he scarcely knew how to comfort her.
"It would be good for us all if you would play," he said softly. "We want consoling—strengthening—uplifting."
"Ah, but music does not always do that!" she answered, with a new note of passion in her voice. "When we are happy, music helps us—but not when we are sad."
"Why not?" said Hubert, more from the desire to make her talk than from any wish to hear her views on that particular subject.
But she spoke eagerly in reply, yet softly, so that her words should not reach the ears of the silent, graceful, languid woman by the fire.
"I can't tell why," she said; "but everything is different. Once music delighted me, even when I was a little sad; but now it seems to harrow my very soul. It brings thoughts into my mind of all the misery of the world. If I hear music, I shed tears—I don't know why. Everything is changed."
"My dear child," said Hubert, "you are unhappy!"
"Yes," she said slowly, with a pathetic tremor of the voice—"yes, I am very—very unhappy."