f
fades away. She sat very straight at the piano, and the position brought
out all the long lines of her figure--the long, round white neck and
throat, the long back and bosom, the long arms and legs--a series of
lovely curves. It has been scientifically demonstrated that pale blue is
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?"

"That's my real life," replied she. "I go through the other part just to
get to the dreams."

"What do you dream?"

She laughed carelessly. "Oh, you'd not be interested. It would seem
foolish to you."

"You're mistaken there," cried he. "The only thing that ever has
interested me in life is dreams--and making them come true."

"But not _my_ kind of dreams. The only kind I like are the ones that
couldn't possibly come true."

"There isn't any dream that can't be made to come true."

She looked at him eagerly. "You think so?"

"The wildest ones are often the easiest." He had a moving voice himself,
and it had been known to affect listening ears hypnotically when he was
deeply in earnest, was possessed by one of those desires that co