single things, speaking in pain, just out of clear hearing, their speech unfinished. Russian or Hungarian. Dvor-tchak. I will ask him. Perhaps he plays Chopin.
The Baileys were growing weary of listening. They were becoming strangers in their own dining-room, with a wonderful important evening going on all round them. Miriam consulted Sissie, probing enviously for the dark busy sulkily hidden thoughts going to and fro behind her attitude of listening. Her eyes were drawing pictures of Mr. Bowdoin’s back view and noting his movements. Mrs. Bailey was still smiling her pride. Her tired eyes were strained brightly towards the performance with the proper expression of delighted appreciation. But now and again they moved observantly across the slender shabby form and revealed her circling thoughts. When she looked at the back of the thatch of soft fine fair hair she was seeing that officeful of men painting posters, the first arrival of Mr. Mendizabal, their resentment of his quick work, the poster he thought of in the night, here, and worked out at the office in an hour, the musician playing so gravely not knowing that he was being seen as the man who was forced by Mr. Mendizabal to play a Beethoven Sonata on the typewriter with his hair in curl-papers. If Mrs. Bailey went too deeply into her speculations she would be too confused to ask him to come again. Perhaps Mr. Mendizabal would bring him anyhow. He was lounging back in his chair with his hands in his pockets. His face seemed to be laughing ironically behind a proud smile. He respected music. He admired Bowdoin for his talent. He was showing him off. It was charming … like Trilby. Men laughing at each other and admiring each other. … She had left off listening. Mr. Bowdoin was sitting there at her side, separate from his music, sitting there English, a little altered by going out into foreign music. A sort of foreigner with an English expression. Her glance had shown her an English profile, a blunted irregular aquiline, a little defaced about the mouth and chin by the influence on the muscles of a common way of speaking. But the back of his head was foreign, the outline of his skull fine and delicate, a delicate