And she cared so much! She knew now that all her practising through
the long hard months of study, had been for Cyril. Every scale had been
smoothed for his ears, and every phrase had been interpreted with his
approbation in view. Across the wide waste of waters his face had shone
like a star of promise, beckoning her on and on to heights unknown...
And now she was here in Boston, but she could not even play the
scale, nor interpret the phrase for the ear to which they had been so
laboriously attuned; and Cyril's face, in the flesh, was no beckoning
star of promise, but was a thing as cold and relentless as was the waste
of waters across which it had shone in the past.
Billy did not understand it. She knew, it is true, of Cyril's reputed
aversion to women in general and to noise; but she was neither women in
general nor noise, she told herself indignantly. She was only the little
maid, grown three years older, who had sat at his feet and adoringly
listened to all that he had been pleased to say in the old days at the
top of the Strata. And he had been kind then--very kind, Billy declared
stoutly. He had been patient and interested, too, and he had seemed not
only willing, but glad to teach her, while now--
Sometimes Billy thought she would ask him candidly what was the matter.
But it was always the old, frank Billy that thought this; the impulsive
Billy, that had gone up to Cyril's rooms years before and cheerfully
announced that she had come to get acquainted.
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