have to
sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct,
before I went away from home."

The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it
herself, unconsciously.

"My friend," said she, "you're right. I reckon I'll have to sing."

"When?" said Tom Osby.

"Now," said Alice Strowbridge. She rose and stepped toward the piano
open near the fire.

The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a
deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion. A splendid creature,
bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the
less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands
twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang
in public as a child. The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught
a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land. The
red rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--half
trembled. Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known in
years--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. There
sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this
lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place where
men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that
which was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how
she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her,
what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floor
she stopped, her hand at her throat.

"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding,
"for me to do this-a-way. It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you
to try to oblige a feller like me. But, ma'am, all I can say is, all
the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."

She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it. Tom Osby grew more
confident, more bold.

"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I
reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort
of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the
things you are singin' right then. Ain't that so?"

"We have many costumes," said she, simply. "We play many parts.
Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."

"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume
to go along with that?"

"You mean--"

"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always
seemed to us, so