pre-eminently the sex color. It certainly was pre-eminently _her_ color,
setting off each and every one of her charms and suggesting the
roundness and softness and whiteness her drapery concealed. She was one
of those rare beings whose every pose is instinct with grace. And her
voice--It was small, rather high, at times almost shrill. But in every
note of its register there sounded a mysterious, melancholy-sweet call
to the responding nerves of man.

Before she got halfway through the song Norman was fighting against the
same mad impulse that had all but overwhelmed him as he watched her in
the afternoon. And when her last note rose, swelled, slowly faded into
silence, it seemed to him that had she kept on for one note more he
would have disclosed to her amazed eyes the insanity raging within him.

She turned on the piano stool, her hands dropped listlessly in her lap.
"Aren't those words beautiful?" she said in a dreamy voice. She was not
looking at him. Evidently she was hardly aware of his presence.

He had not heard a word. He was in no mood for mere words. "I've never
liked anything so well," he said. And he lowered his eyes that she might
not see what they must be revealing.

She rose. He made a gesture of protest. "Won't you sing another?" he
asked.

"Not after that," she said. "It's the best I know. It has put me out of
the mood for the ordinary songs."

"You are a dreamer--aren't you?"