I grew red all at once, and tried to swallow.
We were quite silent. She relieved the tension by stepping casually away from the table and glancing past me into my room.
“Is that your phonograph—in there?” she asked, her voice still low, and now a thought husky.
“Yes,” said I. “You must have heard it.”
She nodded slowly. “Sometimes it sounded like that,” she mused. “And other times it was like music a long way off. You played some melodies on a Chinese stringed instrument. They were quaint.”
“It is a Japanese instrument,” I corrected eagerly. Then I became confused, and knew that I was turning red again. The story of those Yoshiwara melodies and of the outcast girl who had played them for me seemed painfully out of place here. Not for anything in the world would I have told that commonplace story—not to this slim woman with the sad, honest blue eyes. For we do not tell such stories to women.
“You spoke of the piano scale,” she went on, in that musing tone. “I never knew before that other people noticed that. Sometimes, when I'm sitting at the piano, and strike one of the black keys after playing on the white, I can hear all around if—overtones, and fractions of tones.”
“Tell me,” I said—“What is the closest interval you have ever sung?”
She slowly shook her head. “I don't know. There never was any reason for trying. And then there was no way to measure fractional tones.”
“There is now,” said I, emphatically. “My ear. Try it. We shall find out. First give me upper c.”