Given a high wind, and half-a-dozen loose sheets of music, the elusive quality of the latter seems to be something almost supernatural, not to say diabolical, and the pursuit would probably have been a lengthy one but for the fact that a tall man, who was rapidly advancing from the opposite direction, seeing the girl’s predicament, came to her help and headed off the truant sheets.  Within a few moments the combined efforts of the girl, the man, and the greengrocer’s boy were successful in gathering them together once more, and having tipped the boy, who had entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing and who was grinning broadly, she turned, laughing and rather breathless, to thank the man.

But the laughter died suddenly away from her lips as she encountered the absolute lack of response in his face.  It remained quite grave and unsmiling, exactly as though its owner had not been engaged, only two minutes before, in a wild and undignified chase after half-a-dozen sheets of paper which persisted in pirouetting maddeningly just out of reach.

The face was that of a man of about thirty-five, clean-shaven and fair-skinned, with arresting blue eyes of that peculiar piercing quality which seems to read right into the secret places of one’s mind.  The features were clear-cut—­straight nose, square chin, the mouth rather sternly set, yet with a delicate uplift at its corners that gave it a singularly sweet expression.

The girl faltered.

“Thank you so much,” she murmured at last.

The man’s deep-set blue eyes swept her from head to foot in a single comprehensive glance.

“I am very glad to have been of service,” he said briefly.

With a slight bow he raised his hat and passed on, moving swiftly down the street, leaving her staring surprisedly after him and vaguely feeling that she had been snubbed.

To Diana Quentin this sensation was something of a novelty.  As a rule, the men who were brought into contact with her quite obviously acknowledged her distinctly charming personality, but this one had marched away with uncompromising haste and as unconcernedly as though she had been merely the greengrocer’s boy, and he had been assisting him in the recovery of some errant Brussels sprouts.

For a moment an amused smile hovered about her lips; then the recollection of her business in Grellingham Place came back to her with a suddenly sobering effect and she hastened on her way up the street, pausing at last at No. 57.  She mounted the steps reluctantly, and with a nervous, spasmodic intake of the breath pressed the bell-button.

No one came to answer the door—­for the good and sufficient reason that Diana’s timid pressure had failed to elicit even the faintest sound—­and its four blank brown panels seemed to stare at her forbiddingly.  She stared back at them, her heart sinking ever lower and lower the while, for behind those repellent portals dwelt the great man whose “Yea” or “Nay” meant so much to her—­Carlo Baroni, the famous teacher of singing, whose verdict upon any voice was one from which there could be no appeal.