only a passionate appeal to Aunt Augusta to intervene for him had made it possible. The rector, too, was beginning to think that his sister should be able to get on without George, and even Mrs. St. John herself had become a little less yearning toward her two young visitors. Finch felt that he could stand the strain no longer, that for a while the orchestra should take no new engagements or that someone else must be found to play the piano. Yet he loved it. It was life—making music, watching the dancing, the love-making, being in the streets late at night, the freshly earned money in his pocket.
Mrs. St. John had been slow to leave them that night. Her health was better, and there was no need for such early retiring. It pleased her to sit in the library with the two fresh-skinned youths, watching them at their study, the light touching their thick hair—George's brown, tousled; Finch's fair, limp, with the lock on the forehead oddly appealing to her. She liked to watch their hands—George's small, white, strong, and precise in their movements; Finch's long, bony, yet beautifully shaped, nervous, uncertain.
They had to assume a trancelike absorption before she would leave them, and when she did leave, and the strain was over, they fell into a fit of smothered laughter that, for Finch, threatened to become hysterical.
"Shut up," ordered George, recovering himself, "or she'll hear you and come back."
Finch buried his face in the crook of his arm and gave forth strange squeaks. George glowered at him.
"I never saw a chap like you. You never know when to stop anything." He looked at his watch. "Good heavens, we'll never dare risk taking a tram. I'll have to phone for a taxi." He opened the door of the library and listened. "I hear her running water upstairs. I guess she's safe, now."
He took the receiver from its hook and gave a number. He stared across the table at Finch, who stared back with wet eyes, his lips stretched in a hysterical grin. He looked so silly that George snorted into the telephone. He sputtered idiotically as he ordered the taxi. Finch
