What if, after all, this _were_ an understudy to what was to come later when Music, his rival, had really conquered?
Bertram knew that however secure might seem Billy's affection for himself, there was still in his own mind a horrid fear lest underneath that security were an unconscious, growing fondness for something he could not give, for some one that he was not--a fondness that would one day cause Billy to awake.

As Bertram, in his morbid fancy pictured it, he realized only too well what that awakening would mean to himself..