Where was she, and what doing?
Had she not dreamed that a hideous choice had been set before her, a choice from which there was no escape, and which, whatever the alternative she accepted, would blast her life?
But that was something grave, earnest, and what place was there for either earnestness or gravity in a world where Geraldine represented womanhood wooed and about to be wedded?
There was but one way of stopping the gabble which was driving her frantic; she threw open the piano and began to play, to play the first music that came into her mind.

It was a passage from the Moonlight Sonata.

A few moments, and the ghosts were laid.

The girls still whispered together, but above their voices the pure stream of music flowed with gracious oblivion.

When Emily ceased, it was with an inward fervour of gratitude to the master and the instrument, To know that, was to have caught once more the point of view from which life had meaning.