have been caught in time."
She threw the paper from her and seated herself at the piano. For a
moment her fingers strayed over the keys, and then, in answer to some
evoking chord, she attacked the _Ernani involami_, than which few
melodies are richer in appeal. Her voice was not of the bravura quality,
the lower register was not full, and the staccati notes were beyond her
range; a professor from a conservatory would have disapproved of her
method as he would have disapproved of that of the ruicenor. But then
the ruicenor sings out of sheer wantonness, because it cannot help it;
and so did she.

And as she sang, anyone who had chanced that way would have accounted
her fair to see. Her gown was black, glittered with jet, about her
throat was a string of pearls, her arms were bare, the wrists
unbraceleted, and in her face that beauty of youth and of fragility
which refinement heightens and which eclipses the ruddier
characteristics of the buxom models of the past. An artist might not
have given her a second glance, a poet would have adored her at the
first. And as she still sang, Arnswald entered the room and approached
the piano at which she sat.

She heard his steps and turned at once expectant of Usselex. Then,
seeing that he was alone, "What have you done with my husband?" she
asked.

"Nothing," the young man answered. "Nothing at all. A gentleman, a
customer, I fancy, sent in his card, and I left him to him." He found a
seat and eyed her gravely. "If I disturb you--"

"Oh, you don't disturb me in the least. What makes you look as though
you came from another planet?"

"What makes _you_ look as though you were going to one?"

Mr. Arnswald is passably impertinent, thought Eden; but the expression
of his face was so reassuringly devoid of any non-conventional symptom
that she laughed outright at the compliment. "Do you care for music?"
she asked.

"Surely, Mrs. Usselex."

"Yes, of course. I forgot. All Germans do. Tell me, how long have you
been in this country? How do you come to speak German without an
accent?"

"I was born here, Mrs. Usselex."

"You were born here! I thought you were a German. Why didn't you tell
me?"

"You did not do me the honor to ask."

"But your father was, wasn't he?"

"No, my father was a Russian, I think."

"You think? Why do you say you think? Don't you know? I never knew
anyone so absurd."

"My father died when I was very young, Mrs. Usselex. I do not remember
him."