"Will you really come? And will you practise with me, so that I can accompany you?" said Manfredi eagerly.

"Yes. I will," said Aaron.

"Oh, good! Oh, good! Look here, come in on Friday morning and let us both look through the music."

"If Mr. Sisson plays for the public," said the Marchesa, "he must not do it for charity. He must have the proper fee."

"No, I don't want it," said Aaron.

"But you must earn money, mustn't you?" said she.

"I must," said Aaron. "But I can do it somewhere else."

"No. If you play for the public, you must have your earnings. When you play for me, it is different."

"Of course," said Manfredi. "Every man must have his wage. I have mine from the Italian government---"

After a while, Aaron asked the Marchesa if she would sing.

"Shall I?" she said.

"Yes, do."

"Then I will sing alone first, to let you see what you think of it--I shall be like Trilby--I won't say like Yvette Guilbert, because I daren't. So I will be like Trilby, and sing a little French song. Though not Malbrouck, and without a Svengali to keep me in tune."

She went near the door, and stood with heir hands by her side. There was something wistful, almost pathetic now, in her elegance.

"Derriere chez mon pere _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_!

Derriere chez mon pere Il y a un pommier doux.

_Tout doux, et iou Et iou, tout doux.

Il y a unpommier doux_.

Trois belles princesses _Vole vole mon coeur, vole_!

Trois belles princesses Sont assis dessous.

_Tout doux, et iou Et iou, tout doux.

Sont asses dessous._"

She had a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. But it was faltering, stumbling and sometimes it seemed to drop almost to speech. After three verses she faltered to an end, bitterly chagrined.

"No," she said. "It's no good. I can't sing." And she dropped in her chair.

"A lovely little tune," said Aaron. "Haven't you got the music?"

She rose, not answering, and found him a little book.

"What do the words mean?" he asked her.

She told him. And then he took his flute.

"You don't mind if I play it, do you?" he said.

So he played the tune. It was so simple. And he seemed to catch the lilt and the timbre of her voice.

"Come and sing it while I play--" he said.

"I can't sing," she said, shaking her head rather bitterly.

"But let us try," said he, disappointed.

"I know I can't," she said. But she rose.

He remained sitting at the little table, the book propped up under the reading lamp. She stood at a little distance, unhappy.

"I've always been like that," she said. "I could never sing music, unless I had a thing drilled into me, and then it wasn't singing any more."

But Aaron wasn't heeding. His flute was at his mouth, he was watching her. He sounded the note, but she did not begin. She was twisting her handkerchief. So he played the melody alone. At the end of the verse, he looked up at her again, and a half mocking smile played in his eyes. Again he sounded the note, a challenge. And this time, as at his bidding, she began to sing. The flute instantly swung with a lovely soft firmness into the song, and she wavered only for a minute or two. Then her soul and her voice got free, and she sang--she sang as she wanted to sing, as she had always wanted to sing, without that awful scotch, that impediment inside her own soul, which prevented her.

She sang free, with the flute gliding along with her. And oh, how beautiful it was for her! How beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. How sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn't aware of the flute. She didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-drift.

Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly breathes, as it rests on a leaf and slowly breathes its wings. For the first time! For the first time her soul drew its own deep breath. All her life, the breath had caught half-way. And now she breathed full, deep, to the deepest extent of her being.

And oh, it was so wonderful, she was dazed. The song ended, she stood with a dazed, happy face, like one just coming awake. And the fard on her face seemed like the old night-crust, the bad sleep. New and luminous she looked out. And she looked at Aaron with a proud smile.

"Bravo, Nan! That was what you wanted," said her husband.

"It was, wasn't it?" she said, turning a wondering, glowing face to him.

His face looked strange and withered and gnome-like, at the moment.

She went and sat in her chair, quite silent, as if in a trance. The two men also sat quite still. And in the silence a little drama played itself between the three, of which they knew definitely nothing. But Manfredi knew that Aaron had done what he himself never could do, for this woman. And yet the woman was his own woman, not Aaron's. And so, he was displaced. Aaron, sitting there, glowed with a sort of triumph. He had performed a little miracle, and felt himself a little wonder-worker, to whom reverence was due. And as in a dream the woman sat, feeling what a joy it was to float and move like a swan in the high air, flying upon the wings of her own spirit. She was as a swan which never before could get its wings quite open, and so which never could get up into the open, where alone it can sing. For swans, and storks make their music only when they are high, high up in the air. Then they can give sound to their strange spirits. And so, she.

Aaron and Manfredi kept their faces averted from one another and hardly spoke to one another. It was as if two invisible hands pushed their faces apart, away, averted. And Aaron's face glimmered with a little triumph, and a little grimace of obstinacy. And the Italian's face looked old, rather monkey-like, and of a deep, almost stone-bare bitterness. The woman looked wondering from one man to the other--wondering. The glimmer of the open flower, the wonder-look, still lasted. And Aaron said in his heart, what a goodly woman, what a woman to taste and enjoy. Ah, what a woman to enjoy! And was it not his privilege? Had he not gained it?

His manhood, or rather his maleness, rose powerfully in him, in a sort of mastery. He felt his own power, he felt suddenly his own virile title to strength and reward. Suddenly, and newly flushed with his own male super-power, he was going to have his reward. The woman was his reward.

So it was, in him. And he cast it over in his mind. He wanted her--ha, didn't he! But the husband sat there, like a soap-stone Chinese monkey, greyish-green. So, it would have to be another time.

He rose, therefore, and took his leave.

"But you'll let us do that again, won't you?" said she.

"When you tell me, I'll come," said he.

"Then I'll tell you soon," said she.

So he left, and went home to his own place, and there to his own remote room. As he laid his flute on the table he looked at it and smiled. He remembered that Lilly had called it Aaron's Rod.

"So you blossom, do you?--and thorn as well," said he.