 shan't you?« she added, with a
pretty inquiring look, anxious, as usual, lest she should have proposed what was
not pleasant to another; but with yearnings towards her unfinished embroidery.
    Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling, perhaps,
except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music - that
does not make a man sing or play the better; and Philip had an abundance of
pent-up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever
meant to express love and jealousy, and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at
the same time.
    »O yes,« he said, seating himself at the piano, »it is a way of eking out
one's imperfect life and being three people at once - to sing and make the piano
sing, and hear them both all the while - or else to sing and paint.«
    »Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands,« said
Stephen. »That has generally been observed in men of great administrative
capacity, I believe. A tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in me!
- haven't you observed that, Miss Tulliver?«
    Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie,
and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.
    »I have observed a tendency to predominance,« she said, smiling; and Philip
at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency disagreeable.
    »Come, come,« said Lucy; »music, music! We will discuss each other's
qualities another time.«
    Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began. She
tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Stephen knew how much she
cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a merely playful resistance;
and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand so that he could look
at her. But it was of no use: she soon threw her work down, and all her
intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring
duet - emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all
enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she
half-started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie!
She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the
inexorable power of sound. You might have seen
