They drew back into the big sunny room, and she seated herself at the piano and turned over loose sheets of music.
He watched her with a look of intensest admiration, she was so tall, so nobly formed, her soft rich gown flowed and followed as she walked, her white throat rose round and royal from broad smooth shoulders.
He was beside her; he took away the music, laid it out of reach, possessed himself of her hands.
"Give them back to me, Mary," he pleaded. "Come to me and help me to be a better man! Help me to be a good father. I need you!"
She looked at him almost pleadingly. His eyes, his voice, his hands,—they had their old-time charm for her. Yet he had only said "Perhaps"—and he might study, might learn.
He asked her to help him, but he did not say "I will do this"—only "I may."
In the steady bright June sunshine, in the sifting dust of a city corner, in the dissonant, confused noise of the traffic below, they stood and looked at one another.
His eyes brightened and deepened as he watched her changing color. Softly he drew her towards him. "Even if you do not love me now, you shall in time, you shall, my darling!"
But she drew back from him with a frightened start, a look of terror.
"What has happened!" she cried. "It's so still!"