'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the piano keys, andturning abruptly to the violinist.Helena looked slowly from her music.'My dear Louisa, ' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She stood tapping her whiteskirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic forbearance.'But I can't understand it, ' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with the exaggeration of onewho is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only lately you would even submit to muting yourviolin. At one time you would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.''I have only lately submitted to many things, ' replied Helena, who seemed weary andstupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from her bristling defiance.'At any rate, ' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't like it.''Go on from Allegro, ' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place on Louisa's score of theMozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the chords, and the music continued.A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire, turned luxuriously fromthe girls to watch the flames poise and dance with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger in the room.It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds of others of thesame kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and again the trams hummed by, butthe room was foreign to the trams and to the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena'sroom, for which she was responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of Augustfoliage; the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square of grass in asetting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace were smooth white. There was noother colouring.5The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs bythe fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the caseof books in the recess-all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the roomclear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of skirting-board, serene.On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two tablets of translucent stonebeautifully clouded with rose and blood, and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter ofmementoes, rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of s