He had dropped his head forward and was scowling at her from under his
brows with a big Beethoven brooding scowl. She did not see, for she
held her face averted.

The silence in the room again seemed charged, and there was greater
constraint in her voice when it was next heard:

"I had to play; you need not have listened."

"I had to listen; you played loud--"

"I did not know I was playing loud. I may have been trying to drown
other sounds," she admitted.

"What other sounds?" His voice unexpectedly became inquisitorial: it
was a frank thrust into the unknown.

"Discords--possibly."

"What discords?" His thrust became deeper.

She turned her head quickly and looked at him; a quiver passed across
her lips and in her eyes there was noble anguish.

But nothing so arrests our speech when we are tempted to betray hidden
trouble as to find ourselves face to face with a kind of burnished,
radiant happiness. Sensitive eyes not more quickly close before a
blaze of sunlight than the shadowy soul shuts her gates upon the
advancing Figure of Joy.