“It wasn’t you I heard playing the other night?”

“No.  It must have been my youngest sister.”

“I knew it wasn’t you.”

“It might have been for all you knew.”

“It couldn’t possibly.  If you played you wouldn’t play that way.”

“What way?”

“Your sister’s way.  Whatever you wanted to do you’d do it beautifully or not at all.”

She made no response.  She did not even seem to have heard him.

“I don’t mean to say,” he said, “that your sister doesn’t play beautifully.”

She turned malignly.  He liked her when she turned.

“You mean that she plays abominably.”

“I didn’t mean to say it.”

“Why shouldn’t you say it?”

“Because you don’t say those things.  It isn’t polite.”

“But I know Alice doesn’t play well—­not those big things.  The wonder is she can play them at all.”

“Why does she attempt—­the big things?”

“Why does anybody?  Because she loves them.  She’s never heard them properly played.  So she doesn’t know.  She just trusts to her feeling.”

“Is there anything else, after all, you can trust?”

“I don’t know.  You see, Alice’s feeling tells her it’s all right to play like that, and my feeling tells me it’s all wrong.”

“You can trust your feelings.”

“Why mine more than hers?”

“Because your feelings are the feelings of a beautifully sane and perfectly balanced person.”

“How can you possibly tell?  You don’t know me.”

“I know your type.”

“My type isn’t me.  You can’t tell by that.”

“You can if you’re a physiologist.”

“Being a physiologist won’t tell you anything about me.”

“Oh, won’t it?”

“It can’t.”

“Why not?”

“How can it?”

“You think it can’t tell me anything about your soul?”

“Oh—­my soul——­” Her shoulders expressed disdain for it.

“Do you dislike my mentioning it?  Would you rather we didn’t talk about it?  Perhaps you’re tired of having it talked about?”

“No; my poor soul has never done anything to get itself talked about.”

“I only thought that as your father, perhaps, specialises in souls—­”

“He doesn’t specialise in mine.  He knows nothing about it.”

“The specialist never does.  To know anything—­the least little thing—­about the soul, you must know everything—­everything you can know—­about the body.  So that you’re wrong even about your soul.  Being a physiologist tells me that your sort of body—­a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious body—­goes with a transparently clean and strong and utterly unconscious soul.”

“Utterly unconscious?”

He was silent a moment and then answered: 

“Utterly unconscious.”

They walked on in silence till they came in sight of the marshes and the long gray line of Upthorne Farm.