’I looked in just to try over a thing I’ve got in my head.  Do come and listen to it —­ will you?  It would be so kind of you to give me your opinion.’

He pointed to a room at the back, visible between plush curtains.  Alma, wishing to refuse, murmured that she had very little time; but Dymes prevailed, and she followed him.  They passed into the pleasant warmth of a blazing fire.  The musician flung off his coat, and at once sat down at the grand piano, open for the convenience of such favoured persons as himself; whilst Alma seated herself in an easy-chair, which she had pushed forward so as to allow of her being seen from the shop.  After some preliminary jingling, Dymes played an air which the listener could not but like; a dainty, tripping melody, fit for a fairy song, with strange little echoes as of laughter, and a half-feigned sadness in the close.  With hands suspended, Dymes turned to see the effect he had produced.

‘Is that your own?’ Alma asked.

‘I’m under that impression.  Rather good, I think —­ don’t you?’

‘Very pretty.’

She hardly believed his assurance, so strong was the contrast between that lightsome lyric and the coarse vanity of the man himself.  He played it again, and she liked it still better, uttering a more decided word of praise.

‘Dicky must write me patter for that!’ Dymes exclaimed, when he saw that she smiled with pleasure.  ’You don’t know Dicky Wellington?  A cousin of Ada’s.  By-the-bye, her concert will be at the end of May —­ Prince’s Hall, most likely.  You shall have a ticket.’

‘Very kind of you.’

‘You know that Mrs. Rayner Mann is giving a charity concert next week?’

‘I have been asked to take part in it,’ said Alma quietly.

‘I’m awfully glad of that!’ shouted Dymes.  ’So I shall hear you again.  The fact is, you know, I don’t think of you as an amateur.  I can’t stand amateurs, except one or two.  I’ve got it into my head that you’ve been one of us, and retired.  Queer thing, isn’t it?’

Alma enjoyed the flattery.  Comfortable in her chair, she showed no disposition to move.  Dymes asked her what she thought of playing, and she told him, Hauser’s ‘Rhapsodie Hongroise’.

‘I’m always being bored by amateurs,’ he resumed.  ’A silly woman who belongs to a Symphony Society asked me yesterday to go and hear her play in the C minor!  I begged to be told what harm I had ever done her, and she said I was very rude.  But I always am to people of that sort; I can’t help it.  Another of them asked me to tell her of a nice piece for the piano —­ a really nice piece.  At once I suggested Chopin’s A flat major Polonaise.  Do you know it?’

‘Of course I do.  Could you play it yourself?’

’I?  Of course not.  You don’t imagine that because one is a successful composer he must be a brilliant virtuoso.  I hardly ever touch a musical instrument.  Wagner was a very poor player, and Berlioz simply couldn’t play at all.  I’m a musical dreamer.  Do you know that I literally dreamt “The Light of Home”?  Now, that’s a proof of genius.’