Alma laughed.

‘But it is!  Do you know how most songs get made nowadays?  There’s Sykes’ “Come when the Dawn” —­ you remember it?  I happen to know all about that.  A fellow about town somehow got hold of an idea for a melody; he didn’t know a note, but he whistled it to Sykes, and Sykes dotted it down.  Now, Sykes knows no more of harmony than a broomstick, so he got another man to harmonise it, and then a fourth fellow wrote an orchestral accompaniment.  That’s the kind of thing —­ division of labour in art.’

‘You’re quite sure you do everything for yourself?’ said Alma mischievously, rising at length.

’I forgive you, because you’re really one of us —­ you are, you know.  You haven’t the look of an amateur.  Now, when you’ve gone out, I’ll ask Sammy, behind the counter there, who he thinks you are, and I’ll give Mrs. Rayner Mann a guinea for her charity if he doesn’t take you for a professional musician.’

‘You will be good enough, Mr. Dymes,’ said Alma severely, ’not to speak of me at all to anyone behind a counter.’

’It was only a joke.  Of course, I shouldn’t have done anything of the kind.  Goodbye; shall see you at Putney.’

For all that, no sooner was Mrs. Rolfe gone than Dymes did talk of her with the salesman, and in a way peculiar to his species, managing, with leers and half-phrases, to suggest not only that the lady was a performer of distinction, but that, like women in general, she had found his genius and his person fatally attractive.  Dymes had the little weaknesses of the artistic temperament.

As usual, Mrs. Rayner Mann’s concert was well attended, and Alma’s violin solo, though an audience more critical than she had yet faced made her very nervous to begin with, received much applause.  Felix Dymes, not being able to get a seat at her side, stood behind her, and whispered his admiration.

’You’ve gone ahead tremendously.  That isn’t amateur playing.  All the others are not fit to be heard in the same day.  Really, you know, you ought to think of coming out.’

Many other persons were only less complimentary, and one, Mrs Strangeways, was even more so; she exhausted herself in terms of glowing eulogy.  At the end of the concert this lady drew Alma apart.

’Dear Mrs. Rolfe, I wonder whether I could ask you to do me a kindness?  Are you in any hurry to get home?’

It was six o’clock, on an evening of January.  Delighted with her success, Alma felt very much like a young man whose exuberant spirits urge him to ‘make a night of it’.  She declared that she was in no hurry at all, and would be only too glad to do Mrs. Strangeways any kindness in her power.

‘It will sound rather odd to you,’ pursued the lady in a low voice, ’but I would rather trust you than anyone else.  You know that Mr. Redgrave and I are very old friends —­ such old friends that we are really almost like brother and sister.’