Chapter XXIII
"Why will you never play for me?"
Gerard stood leaning on the piano, his eyes half smiling, yet with a look of mastery, fixed upon Elizabeth. She was sitting in a low chair by the fire, the book on her lap which she had been reading when he came in. It was a stormy March afternoon, and the dusk was closing in prematurely. The room was already in shadow, except where the firelight formed a little circle of radiance, illumining Elizabeth's face and hair. Seated thus in the full glow of light, with the shadows in the foreground, all the little details of her appearance—the broad sweep of rippling hair on her forehead, the soft laces at her throat, the pale, dull green of her gown, even to the buckle on her slipper, and the one white rose in her belt—each trifling part of the harmonious whole, impressed itself on his memory, haunting him afterwards with a keen sense of pain.
She looked up at him now from under her long lashes, with the old light in her eyes, half defiant, half tantalizing—that spirit of revolt which still glanced forth at times to baffle and disturb him.
"I don't want to play this afternoon. I don't—feel in the mood."
"You are never in the mood when I ask you." Silence. "Confess at once," said Gerard, with some heat—"for it would really be quite as civil—that you don't wish to play for me."
Another swift upward glance. "Perhaps I don't"—demurely.—"You're too severe a critic."
"You know," said Gerard, "that that is not the reason."
Silence again. "Will you tell me the reason?" he asked.