"Give it to me," said the doctor.
Valentine did so and the doctor quietly opened the piano, drew up the
music-stool, and signed to Valentine to sit down.
"If you mean what you say, the explanation must simply be that you are
suffering from some form of hysteria," he said, rather authoritatively.
"Now sing me something. No; I won't let you off."
Valentine, sitting on the stool, extended his hands and laid the tips of
his long fingers upon the keys, but without sounding them.
"You insist on my trying to sing?" he asked.
"I do."
"I warn you, doctor, you will be sorry if I do. My voice is quite out of
order."
"No matter."
"Go on, Val," cried Julian, from his arm-chair. "Anybody would think you
were a young lady."
Valentine bent his head, with a quick gesture of abnegation.
"As you will," he said.
He struck his hand down upon the keys as he spoke. That was the strangest
prelude ever heard. In their different ways Doctor Levillier and Julian
were both intensely fond of music, both quickly stirred by it when it
was good, not merely classical, but extravagant, violent, and in any way
interesting. Each of them had heard Valentine play, not once only, but a
hundred times. They knew not simply his large _r?pertoire_ of pieces and
songs through and through, but also the peculiar and characteristic
progressions of his improvisations, the ornaments he most delighted in,
the wildness of his melancholy, the phantasy of his gaieties; and they
knew every tone of his voice, which expressed with an exquisite realism
the temperament of his soul.
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