n
I study how to please you, and only seem to get in wrong."

"Don't 'study'," she said with a superior air. "Just be yourself."

"But I am myself, and it only provokes you."

The brown eyes flashed. "Oh, you're too conceited for words!"

This was a new thought to Evan. He considered it. "No," he said at
last, "I don't think I am. At least not offensively conceited. But it
seems to me you are so accustomed to having men bow down before you
that the mildest independence in a man strikes you as something
outrageous."

This was near enough the truth to be an added cause for offense. She
received it in an ultra-dignified silence.

"I'd like to bow down before you too," Evan went on smiling. "But
something tells me if I did it would be the end of me. You would
despise me."

Her mood changed abruptly. "I feel better now," she said. "One really
cannot take you seriously. I'll sing."

Her hands drifted over the keys, and she dropped into "Mighty lak' a
Rose." The air was admirably suited to the deeper notes of her voice.
The listener's heart was drawn right out of his breast; he forgot at
once his fear of being mastered, and his great desire to master her.

When she came to the end he murmured, deeply moved: "I can't say
anything."

She could have asked no finer tribute. "You needn't," she murmured.

The pleasure she took in his applause was evidenced in the warmth she
imparted to the next song. She made it intolerably plaintive: "Just a
Wearyin' for You."

Evan held his breath in delight. "If the words were true!" he thought.
But though she sang with abandon, she never looked at him. He was
artist enough to know better than to take an artistic performance
literally.

Nothing more was said for a long time. She passed from one song to
another, singing from memory; dreamily improvising on the piano
between. She chose only simple songs in English which pleased Evan
well--could she read his heart?--the "Shoogy-Shoo"; "Little Boy Blue";
the "Sands o' Dee."

Evan was incapable of criticising her voice. Some might have objected
that it lacked that bell-like clearness so much to be desired; that it
had a dusky quality, but Evan was not quarrelling because it was the
voice of a woman instead of an angel. One thing she had beyond
peradventure, temperament; her heart was in her singing, and so it
played on his heartstrings as she willed.

While he listened enraptured, he saw the moon peek over the