If this were no real home, the young man had never had one.  He had spent periods of his life in various sorts of dwelling-places; in private rooms at schools and college—­always the finest of their kind—­in clubs, on ships, in railway trains; but no time at all in any place remotely resembling the house in which he now waited, a stranger in every sense of the word, more strange to the everyday, fine type of home known to the American of good birth and breeding than may seem credible as it is set down.

“Hold on there!” suddenly shouted a determined male voice from somewhere above Richard.  A door banged, there was a rush of light-running feet along the upper hall, closely followed by the tread of heavier ones.  A burst of the gayest laughter was succeeded by certain deep grunts, punctuated by little noises as of panting breath and half-stifled merriment.  It was easy to determine that a playful scuffle of some sort was going on overhead, which seemed to end only after considerable inarticulate but easily translatable protest on the part of the weaker person involved.

Then came an instant’s silence, a man’s ringing laugh of triumph; next, in a girl’s voice, a little breathless but of a quality to make the listener prick up ears already alert, these most unexpected words: 

“’O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant!’”

“Is it, indeed, Miss Arrogance?” mocked the deeper voice.  “Well, if you had given it back at once, as all laws of justice, not to mention propriety, demanded, I should not have had to force it away from you.  Oh, I say, did I really hurt that wrist, or are you shamming?”

“Shamming!  You big boys have no idea how brutally violent you are when you want some little thing you ought not to have.  It aches like anything,” retorted the other voice, its very complaints uttered in such melodious tones of contralto music that the listener found himself wishing with all his might to know if the face of its owner could by any possibility match the loveliness of her voice.  Dark, he fancied she must be, and young, and strong—­of education, of a gay wit, yet of a temper—­all this the listener thought he could read in the voice.

“Poor little wilful girl!  Did she get hurt, then, trying to have her own way?  Come in here, jade, and I’ll fix it up for you,” the deeper tones declared.

Footsteps again; a door closed.  Silence succeeded for a minute; then the Schumann music began again, a violin accompanying.  And suddenly, directly opposite the settee, a door swung slowly open, the hand upon the knob invisible.  A picture was presented to the stranger’s eyes as if somebody had meant to show it to him.  He could but look.  Anybody, seeing the picture, would have looked and found it hard to turn his eyes away.