“What a delightful change, my dear! Now you look more like my little girl Viola, and perhaps you will play and sing for me again?”
Viola was in an acquiescent mood. She granted his request, though she had never before touched the piano since she came home. She tried to put her heart into the work, playing all he asked for, even singing again, and he noticed her voice had lost none of its beauty or power, only gained a deeper pathos that made it irresistible.
Suddenly, in the midst of the singing, a caller was announced—Professor Desha.
Viola greeted him with no apparent embarrassment, only she wished in her heart that she had still worn her black gown, and wondered if papa and Aunt Edwina had known of his coming.
But her hasty glance at their faces showed no consciousness, only surprise, and in a little while they had slipped away, and she found herself alone with her old lover—alone for the first time since that March night almost a year ago when they had quarreled so bitterly, and he had gone away in anger, leaving her a jilted bride, mad with shame and misery.
It all rushed over them both, and they could not speak of indifferent things. Desha cried, passionately:
“Viola, you surely understand why I have come?”
She smiled strangely, thinking that, like Florian, he wanted to pay his debt and get it over.
She resolved that she would permit him to do so as soon as possible, wishing also to have it over.
Desha’s eyes glowed with excitement as he said: