The boudoir was in an angle of the house opposite to which, a floor higher, was the gallery. As he played, someone in the picture-gallery turned on the electric lights, and one long shaft, coming through the window, shone down on the player's head.
"See the Halo, Bicky?" asked the boy in a natural voice. "Isn't he splendid?" Then he added, with the frown she so dreaded: "Take me away before they begin to clap, will you?"
"No clapping allowed, Tommy," Joyselle assured him quietly. "Know this?"
And he played on.
His face, full of tender solicitude, was, Brigit thought, almost divinely beautiful as she watched it. And by some curious freak of the down-falling light only his head and shoulders were visible, and seemed almost to be floating in the gloom. Never had he been so handsome, and never so pitilessly remote. He had forgotten her; he had forgotten love; he was not even the Musician—he was a Healer, a being miles above and beyond her and her weak human longing.
Tommy's eyes had closed, and the low music went on and on. The room was now quite dark, save for the light that encircled Joyselle's head. It was like a wonderful picture, and the innate nobility of the man obliterated for the time all else from his fine face.
Tommy was asleep, and still the music went on.
"Salut demeure chaste et pure," he was playing now, and Brigit recalled with a great heart throb the evening she had met him in the train. "Salut demeure——" The high note, pure and thrilling, lingered long, and then, as it had come, the light went, and it was dark.
The music ceased, and there was a long pause. Then, without a word, Joyselle left the room, closing the door softly behind him.