An hour later they were in another small attic-like space next to the supper-room.  Here was always the best of their evening.  No matter how poor the spot, if there reach it some solitary ray of the great light of the world, let it be called your drawing-room.  Where civilization sends its beams through a roof, there be your drawing-room.  This part of the garret was theirs.

In one corner stood a small table on which were some tantalizing books and the same lamp.  Another corner was filled by the littlest, oldest imaginable of six-octave pianos, the mythical piano ancestor; on it were piled some yellowed folios, her music once.  Thus two different rays of civilization entered their garret and fell upon the twin mountain-peaks of the night—­books and music.

Toward these she wished regularly to lead him as darkness descended over the illimitable city and upon its weary grimy battle-fields.  She liked him to fall asleep on one or the other of these mountain-tops.  When he awoke, it would be as from a mountain that he would see the dawn.  From there let him come down to the things that won the day; but at night back again to things that win life.

They were in their drawing-room, then, as she had taught him to call it, and she was reading to him.  A knock interrupted her.  She interrogated the knock doubtfully to herself for a moment.

“Ashby,” she finally said, turning her eyes toward the door, as a request that he open it.

The janitor of the building handed in a card.  The name on the card was strange to her, and she knew no reason why a stranger should call.  Then a foolish uneasiness attacked her:  perhaps this unwelcome visit bore upon her engagement at the studio.  They might not wish her to return; that little door to a larger income was to be shut in their faces.  Perhaps she had made herself too plain.  If only she had done herself a little more justice in her appearance!

She addressed the janitor with anxious courtesy: 

“Will you ask him to come up?”

With her hand on the half-open door, she waited.  If it should be some tradesman, she would speak with him there.  She listened.  Up the steps, from flight to flight, she could hear the feet of a man mounting like a deliberate good walker.  He reached her floor.  He approached her door and she stepped out to confront him.  A gentleman stood before her with an unmistakable air of feeling himself happy in his mission.  For a moment he forgot to state this mission, startled by the group of the two.  His eyes passed from one to the other:  the picture they made was an unlooked for revelation of life’s harmony, of nature’s sacredness.

“Is this Mrs. Truesdale?” he asked with appreciative deference.

She stepped back.

“I am Mrs. Truesdale,” she replied in a way to remind him of his intrusion; and not discourteously she partly closed the door and waited for him to withdraw.  But he was not of a mind to withdraw; on the contrary, he stood stoutly where he was and explained: