She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well.  She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own.  Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it.  Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did.

She understood Roger’s strange and sudden jealousy now.  Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory—­bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing—­the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body.

The doors of her soul—­that innermost sanctuary of all—­would never be opened for any other to enter in.  But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done.  She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.

All at once, a plan to accomplish this formulated itself in her mind.  He had wanted to “smash the piano.”  Well, he should never want that again.  She would show him that her music was not going to stand between them—­that she was willing to share it with him.  She would talk to him about it, get him to understand something of what it meant to her, and when the concerto was quite finished, she would invite him into the West Parlour to listen to it.  It was nearing completion—­another week’s work and what Sandy laughingly termed her “magnum opus” would be finished.  Of course Roger wouldn’t be able to give her a musician’s understanding of it, but he would certainly appreciate the fact that she had played it to him first of anyone.

It would go far to heal that resentful jealousy if she “shared” the concerto with him.  He would never again feel that she was keeping him outside the real interests of her life.  Probably, later on, when it was performed by a big London orchestra, under the auspices of one of the best-known conductors of the day—­who happened to be a particular friend of Nan’s and a staunch believer in her capacity to do good work—­Roger would even begin to take a quaint kind of pride in her musical achievements.

What she purposed would involve a good deal of pluck and sacrifice.  For it takes both of these to reveal yourself, as any true musician must, to an audience of one with whom you are not utterly in sympathy.  But if by this road she and Roger took one step towards a better understanding, towards that comradeship which was all that she could ever give him, then it would have been worth the sacrifice.