The color dyed Beryl's face. "I never thought—" she muttered, then stopped abruptly, ashamed of her own admission.
"No, you never thought! Do you ever think much beyond yourself?" Then, afraid that he had spoken too harshly, he laid his hand affectionately upon Beryl's shoulder. "But you are young, my dear, and youth is careless. Jacques Henri knows that there is good in you—my eyes are wise and I can see into your heart. It is an honest little heart—you will heed in time. Ambition is a greedy thing—watch out that you keep it in your clever head and do not let it wrap its hard sinews about your heart, crushing all that is beautiful there. Listen to me, child; think you that your music can reach into the souls of people if you do not feel that music in your own good soul? Your fingers may be clever and your body strong, but your music will be cold, cold, if the heart inside you is a little, cold, mean thing! Many's the one, I grant you, content to feed the passing plaudits of the crowd, but not the master—he must go further, he must give of himself to all that they may carry something beautiful of his gift away in their hearts. That is the master. That is music."
Beryl, always so ready in self-defense, stood mute before the old man's charge. She had been scolded too often by this dear recluse to resent it; she had, too, faith in anything he might say.
Then: "You just ought to know Robin," she burst out, irrelevantly, eager that her old teacher should believe that, even though she might be a selfish, thoughtless girl herself, she could recognize and respect the good qualities in others.
"Forgive your old friend if he has hurt you. Go now to your blessed mother and lay your good fortune at her feet. That I might see her face!"
"And if she wants to use—some of the money, will you help me?" asked Beryl, in a meek voice.
"Ah, most surely. And proudly."
Beryl rode back to Miss Erne's in a contritely humble mood.
"I wish there were some sort of medicine one could take to make them better inside their hearts! I wouldn't care how nasty it tasted," she mourned, impatient at the long, hard climb that must be hers if she ever made of herself what her Jacques Henri wanted.
All of Miss Effie's coaxing could not keep Beryl from taking the afternoon train to Wassumsic.