Chapter 6 - (VERSO)

80540                 28

he has disobeyed me, in the spirit if not in the letter. Do you not know it, Felix?”

“Yes, grandfather. I have done wrong—I’ve known that I was doing wrong every time I came. Forgive me, grandfather.”

“Felix, I forgive you. But I ask you to promise me, here and now, that you will never again, as long as you live, touch a violin.”

Dusky crimson rushed madly over the boy’s face. He gave a cry as if he had been lashed with a whip. Old Abel sprang to his feet.

“Don’t you ask such a promise of him, Mr. Leonard,” he cried furiously. “It’s a sin, that’s what it