When they refused she began turning over the sheets of dance music which lay upon the piano.

The pieces were generally bound in coloured covers, with pictures on them of romantic scenes--gondoliers astride on the crescent of the moon, nuns peering through the bars of a convent window, or young women with their hair down pointing a gun at the stars.

She remembered that the general effect of the music to which they had danced so gaily was one of passionate regret for dead love and the innocent years of youth; dreadful sorrows had always separated the dancers from their past happiness.
"No wonder they get sick of playing stuff like this," she remarked reading a bar or two; "they're really hymn tunes, played very fast, with bits out of Wagner and Beethoven." "Do you play?
Would you play?
Anything, so long as we can dance to it!" From all sides her gift for playing the piano was insisted upon, and she had to consent.

As very soon she had played the only pieces of dance music she could remember, she went on to play an air from a sonata by Mozart.
"But that's not a dance," said some one pausing by the piano.
"It is," she replied, emphatically nodding her head.

"Invent the steps." Sure of her melody she marked the rhythm boldly so as to simplify the way.