"I don't like
ordinary music, because the person who made it doesn't matter to me.
But if, so to speak, it sounds like somebody I know, it is a different
matter."
Michael turned to Sylvia.
"I want to ask your leave for something I have already done," he said.
"And if I don't give it you?"
"Then I shan't tell you what it is."
Sylvia looked at him with her candid friendly eyes. Her brother always
told her that she never looked at anybody except her friends; if she was
engaged in conversation with a man she did not like, she looked at his
shirt-stud or at a point slightly above his head.
"Then, of course, I give in," she said. "I must give you leave if
otherwise I shan't know what you have done. But it's a mean trick. Tell
me at once."
"I've dedicated the Variations to you," he said.
Sylvia flushed with pleasure.
"Oh, but that's absolutely darling of you," she said. "Have you, really?
Do you mean it?"
"If you'll allow me."
"Allow you? Hermann, the Variations are mine. Isn't it too lovely?"
It was at this moment that Aunt Barbara happened to glance at Michael,
and it suddenly struck her that it was a perfectly new Michael whom she
looked at. She knew and was secretly amused at the fiasco that always
attended the introduction of amiable young ladies to Ashbridge, and had
warned her sister-in-law that Michael, when he chose the girl he wanted,
would certainly do it on his own initiative.
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