"Yes," he said, "the times are wunderbar bad for great souls, great artistes like mineself. No one wishes to hear me play. And, lieber Himmel, when I think of it, what a tone I have! In this Abbey I could make my little violino into a great orchestra. Ach, Fräulein, but you know. You, with the wunderbar charm, know. But you yourself are sad. 'Brother's' troubles have been too much for you?"
Katharine smiled to herself.
"Poor 'brother'!" she thought. "I am letting him be held responsible for all my sadness."
Willy Tonedale was the only one who did not think Ronald entirely responsible for Katharine's altered manner. He questioned her about Clifford Thornton, and could get nothing from her in the way of confidence. He found her reading weird books about dreams, their meaning and their relationship to normal consciousness. She spent long hours over that subject, and could make nothing of it.
"I did not know you went in for this sort of game, Kath," he said one day.
"Oh, I do not go in for it," she said, with a slight laugh. "But I was curious to see what had been written about it. The books are disappointing. They record such trivial incidents."
Willy looked at her uneasily.
"I believe you are going to become a scholar as well as a business woman, Kath," he said.
He shook his head. He seemed to think that she was in a very bad way.
A few days afterwards he found her studying a scientific book, "Outlines of Organic Chemistry." It was true that she had it upside down; but, as he remarked, that only added to the abstruseness of the subject.