"I say--you _can_ play," stammered the boy. "I--it is glorious."

"You love music, Brigitte says."

"Don't I just! She says you'll play for me some time."

Tommy's small, greenish eyes were wet with irrepressible tears of
adoration.

Joyselle rose. "Come with me to my room now, Tommy, and I will play for
you. _Vous permettez, madame?_"

Lady Kingsmead bowed graciously, but when the door closed, frowned with
disgust, and putting Maeterlinck on the table, drew Claudine from under
an embroidered pillow and began to read.

Tommy, treading on air, accompanied Joyselle to his room, and sitting on
the floor as the easiest place in which to contain almost unbearable
rapture, listened.

Joyselle as he played recalled another little boy who, years before, had
listened in much the same way to another man playing the violin, and the
comparison is not so far-fetched as it seems, for although the blind
fiddler of the sunny day in Normandy had been only a third-rate scraper
of the bow, and Joyselle one of the world's very greatest artists, yet
in one thing they joined issue. Each of them gave to the listening child
before him his very best.