To her he was a mystery unfathomable. The heart within her was so delicate, it easily swayed from harmony to discord. She was so sensitive, she must needs be always responsible to the painful as well as the ecstatic emotions.
In her habit of telling him everything that happened in her life there was one thing that she had kept. The nearer it came, the more vivid grew her prescience of what awaited her. The strain of this fresh anxiety was consuming her. Would she have strength to hold out?
She was whiter, her cheeks had not quite that rose bloom she had brought with her out of the air and sunshine. Under this weight she went steadfastly on, in silence.
Glenn saw this. He had told her she was working too hard. He could see that her health was not up to the mark. When there was a cloud, or the shadow of a cloud upon her face, he saw it. She should see a doctor. He told her that repeatedly. Honest as she was, she could not bring herself to tell him that she was too poor. Already she had battled through the heat of the long summer, in need of medical assistance. She was living up to her income, and found it difficult to furnish the bare necessities and pay for just half the lessons she had counted on. There was no hope of shortening the three years except by increasing her practice. This she determined to do, six hours a day instead of three.
“I believe you would stay up in that room and mold,” Glenn said one day as they walked in the sun by the river. “You surely could find time for an outing once a day for an hour or two.” He was puzzled to know why she had declined to walk with him of late. It did not occur to him that lack of time was her excuse.
“You have your lessons but four days in the week,” he said.
“Only two now,” she corrected him.
“Then you have changed your plans!”
“Yes.”
“And how many hours a day do you devote to your practicing?”