An hour and a half went by very quickly. Just when she thought things were going better, he put his hand on her shoulder.

"Enough for today, Miss Gayheart. Very good for a first trial. Shall we begin at the same hour tomorrow? And don't become agitated when you make mistakes. What I most want is elasticity. You must learn to catch a hint quickly in the tempi. When I'm eccentric, catch step with me. I have a reason, or think I have. Now suppose we sit down over here by the fire and have a glass of port and a biscuit. We've been working very hard."

She rose and went to the chair he pointed out. She suddenly felt tired. Sebastian lowered the heavy window-shades a little, until the sunshine fell only on the rugs and the brass fire-irons. He brought a tray with a decanter and glasses and sat down opposite her, lounging back in his chair with his feet to the fire.

"Have you ever heard the Elijah well given, Miss Gayheart?"

Lucy told him she had never heard it given at all.

He smiled indulgently. "Mendelssohn is out of fashion just now. Who is the fashion? Debussy, I suppose? You've noticed that people are interested in music chiefly to have something to talk about at dinner parties?"

Lucy murmured she couldn't say as to that; she didn't go to dinner parties, and she didn't know anyone in Chicago except Professor Auerbach and a few of his students.

"And in your own part of the country isn't it so?"

"I think my father is the only person in our town who is much interested in music. He leads the town band and gives lessons on the clarinet."

"Your father is a music-teacher?"

"Not exactly. He's a watchmaker by trade, but he plays the clarinet and flute very well, and the violin a little."

"German, of course? That's good. A German watchmaker who plays the flute seems to me a comfortable sort of father to have."

He asked her how she happened to come to Chicago, and to study with Auerbach. She felt that his questions were not perfunctory, that he really wanted to know something about her life, and she got over her shyness.

While they were talking, the outer door opened softly, and a little man in a stiffly starched white jacket and noiseless tennis shoes, carrying several coats on hangers, darted through the room and disappeared into the sleeping-chamber beyond.

"That is Giuseppe, my valet," Sebastian explained. "Come in and see how well he does for me." He opened the door and took Lucy into his sleeping-room. "Giuseppe, this is the Signorina who is coming to play for me until Mr. Mockford is better. I want her to see how we live."

"Si, si, signore." Giuseppe smiled eagerly and stepped back from the clothes-closet, pointing to the rows of coats and trousers very much as if he were a guide in a picture gallery. When he thought she had observed them sufficiently, he flourished his hand toward the dressing-table and toward a bed of faultless contour.

"Yes, he keeps everything very neat. If you went through my bureau drawers, you'd find them just like your own. He makes my breakfast too, and brings it up to me."

Giuseppe stood holding his hands clasped in front of his stomach, smiling like a little boy being praised. His face seemed almost like a boy's. But his hair, Lucy noticed, was thin and faded, and his high red forehead (shaped like a bowl) was seamed by deep lines from left to right. A moment later, when he had gone to the far end of the music room to put fresh coal on the fire, Lucy asked Sebastian whether Giuseppe had been with him long.

"I picked him up in London, on the way over. He used to be valet de chambre in an hotel in Florence. I've never had better service. Think of it, he has got all those lines on his forehead worrying about other people's coats and boots and breakfasts. I haven't a friend in the world who would do for me what that little man would."

Something in the way he said this made Lucy feel a trifle downcast.