“I know you are,” he answered simply, his big body a-thrill with half-holy joy at her touch. “What’s the one you’re playing now with your other hand. Ain’t so very long, but it’s kind of sprightly.”
“It’s Siegfried’s horn-call. See how it changes to four-time and loses all its buoyancy, in the Goetterdaemmerung funeral march.”
Solemnly, hopelessly, the transformed, distorted horn-call crashed out.
“That ain’t the same thing you played just now, is it?” he asked in doubt. “Sounds sort of like the toons the bands play at Masonic fun’rals.”
“Same notes. Different tempo. One is the motive of the boy who starts out through the forest of life sounding a joy-challenge to everything and everybody. The other is woven into the dead hero’s mourning chant. In Goetterdaemmerung, you know.”
“Oh, yes. I remember now,” said Caleb, hastily. “It’d just slipped my mind for the minute. I’ve got so many things to think of, you know.”
“Caleb Conover!”
Down came both little hands with a reproving bang on the keyboard, as the girl started out of her rhapsody.
“Caleb Conover, you’re being that way again! And after all I’ve told you. How am I going to cure you of pretending?”
“But, Dey!” he declared. “Honest I—I thought—I did.”