She laid it aside obediently.
"Well, this?"
"Yes. Let us try that."
She moved nearer to him, to miss the reflection of the candles on the paper, and put her hands behind her back. She cleared her throat. He knew she was nervous, but he had no such feeling himself.
"Ready?" he asked, glancing round and up into her face. She smiled timidly, flushing, and then nodded.
"No," she exclaimed the next second, as he boldly struck the first chord. "I don't think I'll sing. I can't."
"Oh, yes, you will—yes, you will."
"Very well." She resigned herself.
The first few notes were tremulous, but quickly she gained courage. The song was a mediocre drawing-room ballad, and she did not sing with much expression, but to Richard's ear her weak contralto floated out above the accompaniment with a rich, passionate quality full of intimate meanings. When his own part of the performance was not too exacting, he watched from the corner of his eye the rise and fall of her breast, and thought of Keats's sonnet; and then he suddenly quaked in fear that all this happiness might crumble at the touch of some adverse fate.