We all waited to see what he would do, to hear what he would say, next.
“My harp!” he cried. “Music will rouse me.”
Ariel brought him his harp.
“Master,” she said, wonderingly, “what’s come to you?”
He waved his hand, commanding her to be silent.
“Ode to Invention,” he announced, loftily, addressing himself to me. “Poetry and music improvised by Dexter. Silence! Attention!”
His fingers wandered feebly over the harpstrings, awakening no melody, suggesting no words. In a little while his hand dropped; his head sank forward gently, and rested on the frame of the harp. I started to my feet, and approached him. Was it a sleep? or was it a swoon?
I touched his arm, and called to him by his name.
Ariel instantly stepped between us, with a threatening look at me. At the same moment Miserrimus Dexter raised his head. My voice had reached him. He looked at me with a curious contemplative quietness in his eyes which I had never seen in them before.
“Take away the harp,” he said to Ariel, speaking in languid tones, like a man who was very weary.