masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift it, and its sounding
wires, with her two hands, with the strength and certitude of
maleness. And then, as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or
leaped--he could scarcely say which--to the sureness and pureness and
ineffable softness of the _Andante_ following.

She played on, with the calm and power of anything but the little,
almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the
ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she
commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was
definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away
in dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed
still to linger in the air.

While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited whispers in the window
seat, and while Dar Hyal sought other music at Paula's direction, she
glanced at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow light till
Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that brought out the dull gold
lights in her dress and hair.

Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows.
Eighty feet in length, rising two stories and a half from masonry
walls to tree-trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from
the rail of which hung skins of wild animals, hand-woven blankets of
Oaxaca and Ecuador, and tapas, woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from
the islands of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was--a
feast-hall of some medieval castle; and almost he felt a poignant
sense of lack of the long spread table, with pewter below the salt and
silver above the salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for
bones.