business men have in mechanical inventions. Jadwin
sat down before it, pulled out a stop or two, and placed his feet on
the pedals. A vast preliminary roaring breath soughed through the
pipes, with a vibratory rush of power. Then there came a canorous snarl
of bass, and then, abruptly, with resistless charm, and with
full-bodied, satisfying amplitude of volume the opening movement of the
overture of "Carmen."

"Great, great!" shouted Gretry, his voice raised to make himself heard.
"That's immense."

The great-lunged harmony was filling the entire gallery, clear cut,
each note clearly, sharply treated with a precision that, if
mechanical, was yet effective. Jadwin, his eyes now on the stops, now
on the sliding strip of paper, played on. Through the sonorous clamour
of the pipes Gretry could hear him speaking, but he caught only a word
or two.

"Toreador ... horse power ... Madame Calve ... electric motor ... fine
song ... storage battery."

The movement thinned out, and dwindled to a strain of delicate
lightness, sustained by the smallest pipes and developing a new motive;
this was twice repeated, and then ran down to a series of chords and
bars that prepared for and prefigured some great effect close at hand.
There was a short pause, then with the sudden releasing of a tremendous
rush of sound, back surged the melody, with redoubled volume and power,
to the original movement.

"That's bully, bully!" shouted Gretry, clapping his hands, and his eye,
caught by a movement on the other side of the room, he turned about to
see Laura Jadwin standing between the opened curtains at the entrance.

Seen thus unexpectedly, the broker was again overwhelmed with a sense
of the beauty of Jadwin's wife. Laura was in evening dress of black
lace; her arms and neck were bare. Her black hair was piled high upon
her head, a single American Beauty rose nodded against her bare
shoulder. She was even yet slim and very tall, her face pale with that
unusual paleness of hers that was yet a colour. Around her slender neck
was a marvellous collar of pearls many strands deep, set off and held
in place by diamond clasps.

With Laura came Mrs. Gretry and Page. The broker's wife was a
vivacious, small, rather pretty blonde woman, a little angular, a
little faded. She was garrulous, witty, slangy. She wore turquoises in
her ears morning, noon, and night.

But three years had made a vast difference in Page Dearborn. All at
once she was a young