“Not yet a year,” corrected Helen.
“It seems to me twenty,” he mused.
“You don’t go to see your uncle, yet?”
“I met him once or twice down town. I have not been home, yet. But that would make no difference. I have no leisure for—all these little things.”
He said the words with such an utter absence of affectation that it was impossible either to smile or to take offence at them. Helen regarded him gravely.
“There were two or three superb concerts this winter. I thought of you. I wished you had come in”—
“Did you take that trouble?” he asked eagerly.
“I don’t think I ever heard Schubert played better in my life,” she went on, without noticing the interruption. “Schoeffelowski does do The Serenade divinely.”
“I used to care for that more than for any other music in the world, I think,” he answered slowly.