Presently she glanced at the tiny clock on the mantelshelf, and, laying the coat aside, put the kettle on the fire, and got ready for tea; for Dick would soon be home from the great engineering works on the other side of the water, and he liked his tea "to meet him on the stairs."
As she was cutting the bread for the toast there came a knock at the door, and in answer to her "Come in!" the door was opened halfway, and a head appeared around it.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Lorton. Lorton not in? I thought I heard his step," said a man's voice, but one almost as soft as a woman's.
Nell scarcely looked up from her task; the tenants of Beaumont Buildings are sociable, and their visits to one another were not limited to the fashionable hours. For instance, the borrowing and returning of a saucepan or a sewing machine, or some lump sugar, went on all day, and sometimes late into the night; and the borrower or lender often granted or accepted a loan without stopping the occupation which he or she happened to be engaged in at the entrance of the other party.
"Not yet. It is scarcely his time, Mr. Falconer. Is it anything I can do?"
The young man came in slowly and with a certain timidity, and stood by the mantelshelf, looking down at her as she knelt and toasted the bread. He was very thin—painfully so—and very pale. There were shadows round his large, dark eyes—the eyes of a man who dreams—and his black hair, worn rather long, swept away from a forehead as white as a woman's, but with two deep lines between the eyes which told the story of pain suffered patiently and in silence.
His hands were long and thin—the hands of a musician—and the one on which his chin rested as he leaned against the mantelshelf trembled slightly. He had been practicing for three hours. He wore an old, a very old black velvet jacket, and trousers bulgy at the knees and frayed at the edges; but both were well brushed, and his shirt and collar were scrupulously clean, though, like the trousers, they; showed signs of wear.
He occupied a room just above the Lortons' flat, and the sound of his piano and violin had entered so fully into Nell's daily life that she was sometimes conscious of a feeling of uneasiness when it ceased, and often caught herself waiting for it to begin again.
"Is it anything I can do?" she asked again, as he remained silent and lost in watching her.
"Oh, no!" he said. "I wanted him to help me lift the piano to another part of the room. The sun comes right on to it now, and it's hot. I tried by myself, but——" He stopped, as if he were ashamed of his weakness. "You've no idea how heavy a piano can make itself, especially on a hot day."