"You can understand, Simon, that I don't want to bother about putting it in shape this year," she concluded, "and as Mr. Gunther assures me that the house can be occupied as it stands, I shall count it a favour if you and Rachel will go and live in it as it is."
But Simon had no wish to be under obligation to Julia, and the matter was settled by his agreeing to rent the place, an arrangement that nettled her. When she rose to go her cheeks were flushed.
Rachel accompanied her to the hall and, as she was leaving, Julia turned and laid her hands on the other's shoulders.
"You are a model couple, aren't you?" she insisted, with an enigmatical smile in her handsome, dark, heavy-lidded eyes.
This smile, which gave her face a resemblance to Simon's, caused the young wife to colour deeply.
Rachel's confession produced no change in Simon's attitude toward her. He remained as attentive and considerate, and yet as restrained in his manner as before, with the difference that he now made a point of keeping her informed of Emil's progress. The new organ attachment promised so well that the Company were hopeful and the inventor was supplied with every facility for proceeding with his work. By vibrating the strings of a piano by means of electrical induction, rather than by striking them with hammers, a strange and ethereal result was obtained, and these tones combined with those of a pipe organ produced an effect absolutely novel in musical expression.
As Rachel listened to Simon's attempted description of the complicated contrivance, she was obliged to bend her head over whatever work she held, to conceal the joyous expression of her face. Until Emil should justify the interest shown in him, she could not help feeling responsible, not alone to her husband but to all the other members of the Company which had been incorporated without sufficient capital.
"St. Ives is even growing businesslike in his treatment of us," Simon remarked one morning in a voice from which he carefully excluded all trace of personal feeling. "He telephoned very early to say that he is called out of town by the illness of his mother. If he finds that her condition is serious, he may be gone some days. So I think, my dear," he concluded, "you had better go round and see Mrs. St. Ives. It must be lonely for her there, and you might take her to drive."
An hour later Rachel showed herself in John Street. Walking along the passage she glanced into Emil's workroom where the organ now occupied half the available space. It was deserted except for Lulu. Crouched on the window ledge, she was pensively cherishing a maple leaf someone had given her. She had removed the substance of the leaf from between the veins, now only its framework remained, and this she held closely to her breast. At Rachel's step she looked over her shoulder and an inscrutable sadness appeared in her little eyes.
Rachel tapped at Annie's door, which was thrown open to her with startling suddenness. Annie was all ready for the street and a suit-case stood on the floor. The room exhibited the utmost confusion.