The flowers, left to themselves, began to give out odors which perfumed the rooms. I went about extinguishing the waning candles and stifling the dying fires, finished my work, and was going upstairs when I heard Veronica playing, and stopped to listen. It was not a paean nor a lament that she played, but a fluctuating, vibratory air, expressive of mutation. I hung over the stair-railing after she had ceased, convinced that she had been playing for herself a farewell, which freed me from my bond to her. Mr. Somers came along the hall with a candle, and I waited to ask him if I could do anything for his comfort.
"My dear," he said with apprehension, "your sister is a genius, I think."
"In music—yes."
"What a deplorable thing for a woman!"
"A woman of genius is but a heavenly lunatic, or an anomaly sphered between the sexes; do you agree?"
He laughed, and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.
"My dear, I am astonished that Ben's choice fell as it did—"
"Good-night, sir," I said so loudly that he almost dropped his candle, and I retired to my room, taking a chair by the fire, with a sigh of relief. After a while Ben and Veronica came up.
"It is a cold night," I remarked.
"I am in an enchanted palace," said Ben, "where there is no weather."