‘Suppose I set up one of those automatic pianos they’re now talking about—could you stand that?’
‘I would have a room where I didn’t hear it. That would be all right.’
‘There’s a wonderful idea I heard of from Paris a week or two ago,’ said Otto excitedly—‘a marvellous electric invention a man’s at work on, where you only turn a handle, or press a button, and you get Rubinstein—or Madame Schumann or my countryman, Paderewski, who’s going to beat everybody. It isn’t finished yet. But it won’t be for the likes of me. It’ll cost at least a thousand pounds.’
‘They’ll get cheaper,’ said Falloden, his chin in his hands, elbows on knees—eyes fixed on his companion. It seemed to him he was talking in a dream, so strange was this thing he had proposed; which apparently was going to come to pass. At any rate Radowitz had not refused. He sat with the dachshund on his knees, alternately pulling out and folding its long ears. He seemed to be, all in a moment, in high spirits, and when he saw Connie coming back through the garden gate, with a shy, hesitating step, he sprang up eagerly to greet her. But there was another figure behind her. It was Sorell; and at sight of him ‘something sealed’ the boy’s lips. He looked round at Falloden, and dropped back into his chair.
Falloden rose from his seat abruptly. A formal and scarcely perceptible greeting passed between him and Sorell. All Falloden’s irritable self-consciousness rushed back upon him as he recognised the St. Cyprian’s tutor. He was not going to stay and cry peccavi any more, in the presence of a bloodless prig, for whom Oxford was the world. But it was bitter to him all the same to leave him in possession of the garden and Connie Bledlow’s company.
‘Thank you—I must go,’ he said brusquely, as Connie tried to detain him. ‘There is so much to do nowadays. I shall be leaving Flood next week. The agent will be in charge.’
‘Leaving—for good?’ she asked, in her appealing voice as they stood apart.
‘Probably—for good.’
‘I don’t know how to say—how sorry I am!’
‘Thank you. But I am glad it’s over. When you get back to Oxford—I shall venture to come and call.’