Adrian, his collar loosened, his hair towzled, his head cocked critically to one side, was in his business-room, seated at his piano, playing over and over again a single phrase, and now and then making a little alteration in it, which he would hurriedly jot down in a manuscript music-book, laid open on a table at his elbow.
"Are n't you going for a holiday this summer?" Anthony asked, with languor, lounging in.
"Hush-sh-sh!" said Adrian, intent upon his manuscript, waving an admonitory hand.
"It's time to dress," said Anthony. He lighted a cigarette.
Adrian strummed through his phrase again, brows knitted, looking intensely judicial. Then he swung round on his piano-stool.
"Hey? What did you say?" he questioned, his blue eyes vague, his pink face blank.
"I merely asked whether you were n't going for a holiday this summer,"
Anthony repeated, between two outputs of smoke.
"And you interrupt a heaven-sent musician, when you see the fit's upon him, merely to ask an irrelevant thing like that," Adrian reproved him. "I was holding an assize, a gaol-delivery. That phrase was on trial before me for its life. In art, sir, one should imitate the methods of a hanging judge. Put every separate touch on trial for its life, and deem it guilty till it can prove itself innocent. Yea, even though these same touches be dear to you as her children to a mother. Such is the high austerity of art. I thought you said it was time to dress."
"So it is," said Anthony. "Are n't you going for a holiday this summer?"
Adrian closed his music-book, and got up.