When the last chord had been struck he began mumbling something about her playing being full of promise, and that she really ought to join some academy or conservatoire.

“You are so kind,” she said.

“Kind? Why do you always say that?”

“Because you always say things like that, and you just say them because you are kind, that is all.”

“But I mean them.”

“I know. But you don’t mean them to mean anything.”

“Now you’ve puzzled me!” He smiled.

“Dear, I know why it is. You can’t help it. And I love you — I can’t help that!”

But he was already bustling about saying, “Now I must put up that picture before anybody comes.”

“You didn’t hear me?”

“I’m sorry … what was it?”

She said, smiling: “I know. There is just one thing more. I will dance for you.”

“Dance for me? Here? Now?”

“Yes. You know the prelude of Chopin that goes like this —” she hummed a few bars of it. “You play that on your violin — I will dance to it.”

“But —”

“Yes? You are afraid if anybody comes? You are afraid if anyone sees through the window? Pull over the curtains. Take up the rugs … Please do that until I come back …”

She ran out of the room and was away a few minutes. During this interval David waited indecisively at first, then, with a sudden clinching of intention, did as she had asked.

First the curtains, then the rugs. The room filled with a warm twilight; he did not switch on any lights because the sunshine out of doors came through the fabric of the curtains in a luminous glow. Then he took his violin and tried over, very softly, the prelude she had mentioned.

Presently she came into the room, dressed in a ballet costume that bore, if he had noticed it, the creases of repeated packings and unpackings. Had he noticed, too, he would have seen that it was a little shabby, and had never been anything remarkable even when new. But in the twilight he saw nothing but a strange vision of the mind, something he had never expected to see in this life, an embodiment of light and air, on tiptoe with a dream. He took up his violin and began to play, watching her all the time. She was magic to him. There was something between them pouring always in invisible streams, the awareness of beauty in peril.

So on an August afternoon, behind drawn curtains in a Calderbury drawing-room, a girl danced for the little doctor. The room filled with the emptiness of all the world except themselves, and this emptiness soared in their hearts until, just on the edge of flight, the spell was broken by the ringing of the telephone.

David put down his violin. Leni stopped still. “A call for me probably,” he said, beginning to walk away. Leni more slowly followed. A moment later he was finding his bag and hat in the surgery.