embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near to each other to nudge
the points of their respective contentions as Paula might expound
them. The girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches or
garlanded in twos and threes on and in the big koa-wood chairs.

Evan Graham half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's
music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself
that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The
grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was
cunningly raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity
and banter had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a
way with her and was accepted as a player of parts. And from this he
was perversely prepared for disappointment.

Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to him:

"She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn't work . . . much.
She studied under Leschetizky and Madame Carreno, you know, and she
abides by their methods. She doesn't play like a woman, either. Listen
to that!"

Graham knew that he expected disappointment from her confident hands,
even as she rippled them over the keys in little chords and runs with
which he could not quarrel but which he had heard too often before
from technically brilliant but musically mediocre performers. But
whatever he might have fancied she would play, he was all unprepared
for Rachmaninoff's sheerly masculine Prelude, which he had heard only
men play when decently played.

She took hold of the piano, with the first two ringing bars,