Never had he been in the least approachable.
"He treats me exactly as he treated poor little Spunk that first night," Billy declared hotly to herself.
Only once since she came had Billy heard Cyril play, and that was when she had shared the privilege with hundreds of others at a public concert.

She had sat then entranced, with her eyes on the clean-cut handsome profile of the man who played with so sure a skill and power, yet without a note before him.

Afterward she had met him face to face, and had tried to tell him how moved she was; but in her agitation, and because of a strange shyness that had suddenly come to her, she had ended only in stammering out some flippant banality that had brought to his face merely a bored smile of acknowledgment.
Twice she had asked him to play for her; but each time he had begged to be excused, courteously, but decidedly.
"It's no use to tease," Bertram had interposed once, with an airy wave of his hands.

"This lion always did refuse to roar to order.

If you really must hear him, you'll have to slip up-stairs and camp outside his door, waiting patiently for such crumbs as may fall from his table." "Aren't your metaphors a little mixed ?" questioned Cyril irritably.
"Yes, sir," acknowledged Bertram with unruffled temper, "but I don't mind if Billy doesn't.