And the man was one of those childlike natures which may indeed go a long time without discovering this or that external fault in themselves, patent to the eye of many an inferior onlooker--for the simple soul is the last to see its own outside--but, once they become aware of it, begin that moment to set the thing right.
At the same time he had not enough of knowledge to render it easy to show him by words wherein any fault consisted--the nature, the being of the fault, that is--what it simply was; but Mary felt confident that, the moment he saw a need, he would obey its law.
She had taken for herself the rooms below, formerly occupied by the Helmers, with the hope of seeing them before long reinstated in them; and there she had a piano, the best she could afford to hire: with its aid she hoped to do something toward the breaking of the invisible bonds that tied the wings of Jasper's genius.
His great fault lay in his time.

Dare I suggest that he contented himself with measuring it to his inner ear, and let his fingers, like horses which he knew he had safe in hand, play what pranks they pleased?
A reader may, I think, be measuring verse correctly to himself, and yet make of it nothing but rugged prose to his hearers.
Perhaps this may be how severe masters of quantity in the abstract are so careless of it in the concrete--in the audible, namely, where alone it is of value.

Shall I analogize yet a little further, and suggest the many who admire righteousness and work iniquity; who say, "Lord, Lord," and seldom or never obey?
Anyhow, a man may have a good enough ear, with which he holds all the time a secret understanding, and from carelessness offend grievously the ears he ought to please; and it was thus with Joseph Jasper.
Mary was too wise to hurry anything.

One evening when he came as usual, and she knew he was not at the moment wanted, she asked him to take a seat while she played something to him.

But she was not a little disappointed in the reception he gave her offering--a delicate morsel from Beethoven.