And before he could protest her fingers were touching the piano with the ease of the born musician.
He sat enraptured as he watched the sinuous grace with which her fingers touched the ivory keys and heard their answering cry which seemed the breath of her own soul in echo.
She had an easy apparently careless touch. To old familiar music she gave a charm that was new, adding something indefinable to the musician’s thought that gave luminous power to its interpretation. He had no knowledge of the technique of music, but now he knew that she was improvising. The piano was the voice of her own beautiful soul, and it was pulsing with a tenderness that melted him to tears.
Suddenly the music ceased, and she turned her face full on his before he could brush away a big tear that rolled down. She flushed, closed the piano, and quietly resumed her place by his side.
“And, now, you haven’t told me how well I played. You’re the first young man so careless.”
“I have told you.”
“How?”
“The way you told me yesterday that you understood me—with a tear.”
“I appreciate it more than words.”
“So did I,” he slowly said. Again there was a long silence.