She reddened, and hardly tried to conceal her vexation.

‘This only means, Harvey, that you don’t want me to come out.’

’Come now, be more reasonable.  It does not only mean that; in fact, I can say honestly it doesn’t mean that at all.  If Wilenski tells you plainly that you ought to become a professional violinist, there’s no one will wish you luck half so heartily as I. But if it’s only the encouragement of “twenty people” —­ that means nothing.  I’m speaking simply as the best friend you have.  Don’t run the risk of a horrible disappointment.  I know you wouldn’t find that easy to bear —­ it would be bad for you, in every way.

Impelled by annoyance —­ for the project seemed to him delusive, and his sense of dignity rose against it —­ Harvey had begun with unwonted decision, but he was soon uncomfortably self-conscious and self-critical; he spoke with effort, vainly struggling against that peculiar force of Alma’s personality which had long ago subdued him.  When he looked at her, saw her distant smile, her pose of the head as in one who mildly rebukes presumption, he was overcome with a feeling of solemn ineptitude.  Quite unaware that his last sentence was to Alma the most impressive —­ the only impressive —­ part of his counsel, suddenly he broke off, and found relief in unexpected laughter.

’There now, I’ve done my duty —­ I’ve discharged the pedagogue.  Get rid of your tragic mask.  Be yourself; do as you wish.  When the time comes, just tell me what you have decided.’

So, once more, did he oust common-sense with what he imagined a riper wisdom.  One must not take things funereally.  Face to face with a woman in the prime of her beauty, he heard a voice warning him against the pedantic spirit of middle age, against formalism and fogeyishness.

‘Now I know you again,’ said Alma, softening, but still reserved; for she did not forget that he had thrown doubt upon her claims as an artist —­ an incident which would not lose its importance as she pondered it at leisure.

Harvey sat late.  On going upstairs, instead of straightway entering his own room, he passed it with soft step and paused by another door, that of the chamber in which Hughie slept under the care of Miss Smith.  The child had coughed in the night during this last week.  But at present all was quiet, and with comfortable reassurance the father went to rest.

Alma had matters to occupy her more important than a child’s passing ailment.  As she slowly unrobed herself by the fire, combed out her warm, fragrant, many-rippled tresses, or held mute dialogue with her eyes in the glass, from a ravel of uneasy thoughts there detached itself, first and foremost, the discovery that Redgrave had not been in Paris when Mrs Strangeways said he was.  What was the meaning of this contradiction?  Thereto hung the singular coincidence of Redgrave’s return home exactly at the time when she and Mrs. Strangeways happened to be there.  She had thought of it as a coincidence and nothing more; but if Redgrave had deceived Mrs. Strangeways as to his movements, the unlooked-for arrival took a suspicious significance.  There remained a dark possibility:  that Mrs. Strangeways knew what was about to happen.  Yet this seemed inconceivable.