genuineness, the
bewitching actuality, of her beauty. The wonder was how she could
contrive to conceal so much of it for the purposes of business. It was a
peculiar kind of beauty--not the radiant kind, but that which shines
with a soft glow and gives him who sees it the delightful sense of being
its original and sole discoverer. An artistic eye--or an eye that
discriminates in and responds to feminine loveliness--would have been
captivated, as it searched in vain for flaw.

If Norman anticipated that she would be nervous before the task of
receiving in her humbleness so distinguished a visitor, he must have
been straightway disappointed. Whether from a natural lack of that sense
of social differences which is developed to the most pitiful
snobbishness in New York or from her youth and inexperience, she
received him as if he had been one of the neighbors dropping in after
supper. And it was Norman who was ill at ease. Nothing is more
disconcerting to a man accustomed to be received with due respect to his
importance than to find himself put upon the common human level and
compelled to "make good" all over again from the beginning. He felt--he
knew--that he was an humble candidate for her favor--a candidate with
the chances perhaps against him.

The tiny parlor had little in it beside the upright piano because there
was no space. But the paper, the carpet and curtains, the few pieces of
furniture, showed no evidence of bad taste, of painful failure at the
effort to "make a front." He was in the home of poor people, but they
were obviously people who made a highly satisfactory best of their
poverty. And in the midst of it all the girl shone like the one evening
star in the mystic opalescence of twilight.

"We weren't sure you were coming," said she. "I'll call father. . . .
No, I'll take you back to his workshop. He's easier to get acquainted
with there."

"Won't you play something for me first? Or--perhaps you sing?"

"A very little," she admitted. "Not worth hearing."

"I'm sure I'd like it. I want to get used to my surroundings before I
tackle the--the biology."

Without either hesitation or shyness, she seated herself at the piano.
"I'll sing the song I've just learned." And she began. Norman moved to
the chair that gave him a view of her in profile. For the next five
minutes he was witness to one of those rare, altogether charming visions
that linger in the memory in freshness and fragrance until memory itsel