covered with faded red roses. For the rest, her costume consisted of a
white shirt waist, a wine-colored skirt and shoes with very high heels
which were conspicuously, and no doubt uncomfortably, run over.

Her violin finally tuned to her satisfaction, she bent her head to speak
to the young man at the piano. He turned to answer her, and for a moment
his delicate, sad face was outlined against the wall behind him. Then,
with an emphatic little nod, he began to play and the woman lifted her
violin and swung in with him.

The only virtue she possessed as a violinist was that she kept good
time, but although it was extremely unlikely that any member of that
audience recognized the fact, the boy was a musician by the divine right
of gift, a gift bestowed at birth. A wheezy old piano, and yet he drew
from it sweet and thrilling notes; a hackneyed, cheap waltz measure, and
yet he invested it with the glamour of romance.

A ripple stirred all those waiting people, as a wind stirs a field of
wheat, a movement of settling and attention. Hanson, who had been
careful to secure a seat in the front row of chairs, was conscious that
his heart was beating faster.

"This is where she whirls in through that door by the piano," he
muttered to himself with the acumen born of long knowledge of the stage
and its conventions. He had a swift mental vision of a graceful painted
creature, all undulating movement, alluring smiles, twinkling feet and
waving arms. This passed with a slight shock as a girl entered the door
by the piano, as he had foreseen, and walked indifferently to the
center of the room, and then, without a bow to her audience, began,
still with an air of languor and absorption, to take vague, sliding