“Your turn,” she bade Sên as she rose. “I know you do. You do everything, don’t you, Mr. Sên?”
“Not nearly,” he assured her. “Is Beethoven your favorite composer?” She had played the Moonlight Sonata. “Or what shall I play for you?”
“No,” she answered. “I just happened to play Beethoven—at random. Play something you like best.”
He chose Grieg.
Ivy wondered if he had seen her favorite composer, as well as her favorite pastime. One was just above the other in the confession-book. She wished she’d never brought it downstairs.
He had not. Sên King-lo had as little inclination to initiate a flirtation with Miss Gilbert as she had to with him—even, possibly, a little less. He deemed flirtations even more vulgar than she did—and he had no ambition to excite jealousy in Lucille, or in any one else, and no sore, young desire to prove himself, in spite of poverty and schoolroom bondage, no social failure.
If he had seen, or known, that Grieg was Miss Gilbert’s favorite composer, he would not have played any music of Grieg’s.
Grieg was Sên King-lo’s favorite composer.
Soon after that he told them goodnight. He bowed to his hostess without offering to shake hands. But Lady Snow held out her hand to him, and then Miss Gilbert could but do the same.
Sên King-lo took her hand in his deferentially, but more lightly, less lingering than she was accustomed to have men do. Yet—as he did—from some indefinable thing in his touch—it flashed across her thought that that slim Chinese hand might not after all give a feeble account of itself at fisticuffs.