"And don't you see what it means? I can begin to study at once! Right this minute! And, oh, how I'll work and practice and learn until—"
She caught up the old man's violin and its bow and drew it across the strings.
"Play!" commanded Jacques Henri, without so much as a word for the Aladdin-lamp tale she had told him.
Beryl played and as she played she wished with all her might she could summon the power that had been hers on Christmas night. She wanted to play for Jacques Henri as she had played then. But she could not.
"Stop!"
Beryl laid the violin down.
The old man scowled at her until she shifted nervously under his searching eyes.
"Your fingers—they are clever, your ear is true—but there is nothing—of you—in what you play! Do you know what I mean?"
He did not wait for Beryl to answer; he went on, with a shake of his great head and his eyes still fixed upon her.
"You come to me and tell me your good fortune and what you will do; how you can study and you can work and you can learn to make good music—and you have no word for what that money will mean to your saint of a mother—aye, the best woman God ever made! Shame to you, selfish girl, that you should put your ambition before her dreams!"