"Fine! fine! Now--slower; see it's the nymph stepping this way and that!
Forward, so! Now!"
And then, exhausted and laughing madly, Priscilla sank down upon a rock
near the musician, who, seeing her worn and panting, played on, without
a word, a sweet, sad strain that brought tears to the listener's
eyes--tears of absolute enjoyment and content. She had never heard music
before in all her bleak, colourless life, and Dick Travers was no mean
artist, in his way.
"And now," he said presently, sitting down a few feet from her, "just
tell me who you are and what in the world prompts you to worship, so
adorably, that hideous brute over there?"
Between fourteen and twenty lies a chasm of age and experience that
ensures patronage to one and dependence to the other. Travers felt aged
and protecting, but Priscilla grew impish and perverse; besides, she
always intuitively shielded her real self until she capitulated entirely.
This was a new play, a new comrade, but she must be cautious.
"I--I have no name--he made me!" She nodded toward the grinning skull.
"On bright sunny afternoons in spring, when flowers and green things are
beginning to live, he lets me dance, once in a great while, so that I can
keep alive!"
Priscilla, with this, gave such a beaming and mischievous smile that
Travers was bewitched.
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