LITMIR.BIZ

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was all wrong,’ she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to rest.

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry I did so badly,’ said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena passionately.

      ‘You didn’t do badly at all,’ replied her friend, in the same tired, apathetic tone. ‘It was I.’

      When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection, like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she were coaxing a child:

      ‘Play some Chopin, Louisa.’

      ‘I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,’ said the elder plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena’s friend for years.

      ‘Play the mazurkas,’ repeated Helena calmly.

      Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.

      ‘They are inflamed still’ said the young man.

      She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired, lighting up with a small smile.

      ‘Yes,’ she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine, strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist, like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the smarting soft flesh caressively.

      ‘It is quite hot,’ she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with peculiar joy.

      ‘Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,’ he replied, frowning. ‘I can’t think why it should last all these months. Don’t you ever put anything on to heal it?’

      She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on the burn.

      ‘It comes out every evening like this,’ she said softly, with curious joy.

      ‘And that was August, and now it’s February!’ he exclaimed. ‘It must be psychological, you know. You make it come — the smart; you invoke it.’

      She looked up at him, suddenly cold.

      ‘I! I never think of it,’ she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.

      The young man’s blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently —’

      ‘Never?’ he re-echoed.

      There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued to play the piano for their benefit. At last:

      ‘Drat it,’ she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.

      The two looked up at her.

      ‘Ye did run well — what hath hindered you?’ laughed Byrne.

      ‘You!’ cried Louisa. ‘Oh, I can’t play any more,’ she added, dropping her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.

      ‘Oh I can’t, Helen!’ pleaded Louisa.

      ‘My dear,’ said Helena, laughing briefly, ‘you are really under no obligation whatever.’

      With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign, but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.

      The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside, the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena’s room, that remained indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar, glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no one spoke.

      At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her position. She sat motionless.

      ‘Will you make coffee, Louisa?’ she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked at her friend, and stretched slightly.

      ‘Oh!’ she groaned voluptuously. ‘This is so comfortable!’

      ‘Don’t trouble then, I’ll go. No, don’t get up,’ said Helena, trying to disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena’s wrists.

      ‘I will go,’ she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and appealing love.

      Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.

      ‘Where is the coffee?’ she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy. She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.

      ‘I think, my dear,’ replied Helena, ‘it is in its usual place.’

      ‘Oh — o-o-oh!’ yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.

      The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to an end.

      ‘After all,’ said Byrne, when the door was closed, ‘if you’re alive you’ve got to live.’

      Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.

      ‘Wherefore?’ she asked indulgently.

      ‘Because there’s no such thing as passive existence,’ he replied, grinning.

      She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.

      ‘I don’t see it at all,’ she said.

      ‘You can’t, he protested, ‘any more than a tree can help budding in April — it can’t help itself, if it’s alive; same with you.’

      ‘Well, then’— and again there was the touch of a sneer —‘if I can’t help myself, why trouble, my friend?’

      ‘Because — because I suppose I can’t help myself — if it bothers me, it does. You see, I’— he smiled brilliantly —‘am April.’

      She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy, metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

      ‘But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me — and — and go through a kind of danse macabre —’

      ‘But you bud underneath — like beech,’ he said quickly.

      ‘Really, my friend,’ she said coldly, ‘I am too tired to bud.’

      ‘No,’ he pleaded, ‘no!’ With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She looked in the fire, forgetting him.

      ‘You want March,’ he said — he worried endlessly over her —‘to rip off your old leaves. I s’ll have to be March,’ he laughed.

      She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then broke out once more.

      ‘You must start again — you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you’re not. Even if it’s a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are not dead. . . . ’

      Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as if yielding beneath a burden of

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