ile.

"Now I'll sing anything you want for you if you go on like that."

"I'm crazy about music," he said; "I don't know anything about it, but I
like this sort of thing."

"You like the really good things. I know. So do I."

He felt flattered and grateful. They went through "Otidi," "The
Nightingale," "Elegie," "The Last Spring"--music Eugene had never heard
before. But he knew at once that he was listening to playing which
represented a better intelligence, a keener selective judgment, a finer
artistic impulse than anyone he had ever known had possessed. Ruby
played and Angela, the latter rather well, but neither had ever heard of
these things he was sure. Ruby had only liked popular things; Angela the
standard melodies--beautiful but familiar. Here was someone who ignored
popular taste--was in advance of it. In all her music he had found
nothing he knew. It grew on him as a significant fact. He wanted to be
nice to her, to have her like him. So he drew close and smiled and she
always smiled back. Like the others she liked his face, his mouth, his
eyes, his hair.

"He's charming," she thought, when he eventually left; and his
impression of her was of a woman who was notably and significantly
distinguished.

CHAPTER XXI

But Miriam Finch's family, of which she seemed so independent, had not
been without its influence on her. This family was of Middle West
origin, and did not understand or sympathize very much with the artistic
temperament. Since her sixteenth year, when Miriam had first begun to
exhibit a definite striving toward the artistic, her parents had guarded
her jealously against what they considered the corrupting atmosphere of
the art world. Her mother had accompanied her from Ohio to New York, and
lived with her while she studied art in the art school, chaperoning her
everywhere. When it became advisable, as she thought, for Miriam to go
abroad, she went with her. Miriam's artistic career was to be properly
supervised. When she lived in the Latin Quarter in Paris her mother was
with her; when she loitered in the atmosphere of the galleries and
palaces in Rome it was with her mother at her side. At Pompeii and
Herculaneum--in London and in Berlin--her mother, an iron-willed little
woman at forty-five at that time, was with her. She was convinced that
she knew exactly what was good for her daughter and had more or less
made the girl accept her theories. Later, Miriam's personal judgment
began