"How kind of him!" The man, having heard, was already tuning his violin when Mary came from the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa.

The instant he had got it to his mind, he turned, and, going to the farthest corner of the room, closed his eyes tight, and began to play.
But how shall I describe that playing?
how convey an idea of it, however remote?
I fear it is nothing less than presumption in me, so great is my ignorance, to attempt the thing.

But would it be right, for dread of bringing shame upon me through failure, to leave my readers without any notion of it at all?
On the other hand, I shall, at least, have the merit of daring to fail--a merit of which I could well be ambitious.
If, then, my reader will imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the man's playing.

Mary tried hard to get hold of some clew to the combinations and sequences, but the motive of them she could not find.
Whatever their source, there was, either in the composition itself or in his mode of playing, not a little of the inartistic, that is, the lawless.

Yet every now and then would come a passage of exquisite melody, owing much, however, no doubt, to the marvelous delicacy of the player's tones, and the utterly tender expression with which he produced them.