No, she wasn’t; she was awfully miserable.

“You don’t care to tell me what it is?”

It really was nothing particular. She had those moods sometimes when life seemed almost unbearable.

“Ah, I know,” he said; “if I could only help!”

“But you do; you do! Oh, if it were not for my lessons I don’t feel I could go on.”

“Sit down in the arm-chair and smell the violets and let me sing to you. It will do you just as much good as a lesson.”

Why weren’t all men like Mr. Peacock?

“I wrote a poem after the concert last night—just about what I felt. Of course, it wasn’t personal. May I send it to you?”

“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed!”

By the end of the afternoon he was quite tired and lay down on a sofa to rest his voice before dressing. The door of his room was open. He could hear Adrian and his wife talking in the dining-room.