"You're tired," she said. "Is anything wrong at the camp?"
But he only shook his head and sat down at the piano. And when she questioned him again he evaded her and went on with the lesson. Music always rested him, and the sound of her voice soothed. It was the "Elégie" of Massenet that he had given her, foolishly perhaps, a difficult thing at so early a stage, because of its purity and simplicity, and he had made her learn the words of the French—like a parrot—written them out phonetically, because the French words were beautiful and the English, as written, abominable. And now she sang it to him softly, as he had taught her, again and again, while he corrected her phrasing, suggesting subtle meanings in his accompaniment which she was not slow to comprehend.
"I didn't know that music could mean so much," she sighed as she sank into a chair with a sense of failure, when the lesson was ended. "I always thought that music just meant happiness. But it means sorrow too."
"Not to those who hear you sing, Beth," said Peter with a smile, as he lighted and smoked a corncob pipe, a new vice he had discovered at the camp. Already the clouds were gone from his forehead.
"No! Do you really think that, Mr. Nichols?" she asked joyously.
She had never been persuaded to call him by his Christian name, though Peter would have liked it. The "Mr." was the tribute of pupil to master, born also of a subtler instinct of which Peter was aware.
"Yes," he replied generously, "you'll sing that very well in time——"
"When I've suffered?" she asked quickly.
He glanced up from the music in his hand, surprised at her intuition.
"I don't like to tell you so——"