shriveled and the Hallowell sort towered.

"I _must_ be going," Norman said. "No--don't come with me. I know the way.
I've interrupted you long enough." And he put out his hand and, by those
little clevernesses of manner which he understood so well, made it
impossible for Hallowell to go with him to Dorothy.

He was glad when he shut the door between him and her father. He paused
in the hall to dispel the vague, self-debasing discomfort--and listening
to _her_ voice as she sang helped wonderfully. There is no more trying
test of a personality than to be estimated by the voice alone. That test
produces many strange and startling results. Again and again it
completely reverses our judgment of the personality, either destroys or
enhances its charm. The voice of this girl, floating out upon the quiet
of the cottage--the voice, soft and sweet, full of the virginal passion
of dreams unmarred by experience--It was while listening to her voice,
as he stood there in the dimly lighted hall, that Frederick Norman
passed under the spell in all its potency. In taking an anaesthetic
there is the stage when we reach out for its soothing effects; then
comes the stage when we half desire, half fear; then a stage in which
fear is dominant, and we struggle to retain our control of the senses.
Last comes the stage when we feel the full power of the drug and relax
and yield or are beaten down into quiet. Her voice drew him into the
final stage, was the blow of the overwhelming wave's crest that crushed
him into submission.

She glanced toward the door. He was leaning there, an ominous calm in
his pale, resolute face. She gazed at him with widening eyes. And her
look was the look of helplessness before a force that may, indeed must,
be struggled against, but with the foregone certainty of defeat.