“I almost wish you had,” said Eileen enigmatically.
“Don’t you like music?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!”
“Violin music?”
“Yes!––but not from that violin. It is not like other violins: it has an unsavoury history.”
“Do you play?”
“Not the violin,” said Eileen, standing with her back to the table, leaning lightly there, clad in her dressing gown, her plaited hair hanging over her shoulder and her eyes on her strange visitor in manifest interest.
“My father is very fond of scraping on a violin. The one he plays is hanging up there.”
She pointed to another violin beside the mantelshelf in the adjoining room.
“And this one?” he queried curiously, pointing to the one she had laid on the table.