k to a murmur.

"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said. "Yes, gladly. It will be
merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
listen, and if you--" She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection,
and laughed ruefully. "But my piano won't be here after to-night. I--I'm
sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to
you you'd have to come this evening."

"You'll let me?" he cried.

"Certainly, if you care to."

"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that old
man in the church I could thank you."

"Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
but--"

"Yes," said Bibbs. "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."

It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty,
and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything
especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she
was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. "You'll come after
dinner, then?"

"Yes," he said, not moving. "Would you mind if I stood here until time
to come in?"

She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
dinner.

That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.

Music can come into a blank life, and fill it. Everything that
is beautiful is music, if you can listen.

There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
piano. There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.

There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
a sparkling sea. The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
the world doesn't like you. You think that perhaps you are a great
fellow, after all. Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher. You'll be whipped
for it--and ought to be.

There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
But they do not have the "Greek profile." I do not believe Helen
of Troy had a "Greek profile"; they would n