Without either hesitation or shyness, she seated herself at the piano.  “I’ll sing the song I’ve just learned.”  And she began.  Norman moved to the chair that gave him a view of her in profile.  For the next five minutes he was witness to one of those rare, altogether charming visions that linger in the memory in freshness and fragrance until memory itself fades away.  She sat very straight at the piano, and the position brought out all the long lines of her figure—­the long, round white neck and throat, the long back and bosom, the long arms and legs—­a series of lovely curves.  It has been scientifically demonstrated that pale blue is pre-eminently the sex color.  It certainly was pre-eminently her color, setting off each and every one of her charms and suggesting the roundness and softness and whiteness her drapery concealed.  She was one of those rare beings whose every pose is instinct with grace.  And her voice—­It was small, rather high, at times almost shrill.  But in every note of its register there sounded a mysterious, melancholy-sweet call to the responding nerves of man.

Before she got halfway through the song Norman was fighting against the same mad impulse that had all but overwhelmed him as he watched her in the afternoon.  And when her last note rose, swelled, slowly faded into silence, it seemed to him that had she kept on for one note more he would have disclosed to her amazed eyes the insanity raging within him.

She turned on the piano stool, her hands dropped listlessly in her lap.  “Aren’t those words beautiful?” she said in a dreamy voice.  She was not looking at him.  Evidently she was hardly aware of his presence.

He had not heard a word.  He was in no mood for mere words.  “I’ve never liked anything so well,” he said.  And he lowered his eyes that she might not see what they must be revealing.

She rose.  He made a gesture of protest.  “Won’t you sing another?” he asked.

“Not after that,” she said.  “It’s the best I know.  It has put me out of the mood for the ordinary songs.”

“You are a dreamer—­aren’t you?”

“That’s my real life,” replied she.  “I go through the other part just to get to the dreams.”

“What do you dream?”

She laughed carelessly.  “Oh, you’d not be interested.  It would seem foolish to you.”

“You’re mistaken there,” cried he.  “The only thing that ever has interested me in life is dreams—­and making them come true.”

“But not my kind of dreams.  The only kind I like are the ones that couldn’t possibly come true.”

“There isn’t any dream that can’t be made to come true.”

She looked at him eagerly.  “You think so?”

“The wildest ones are often the easiest.”  He had a moving voice himself, and it had been known to affect listening ears hypnotically when he was deeply in earnest, was possessed by one of those desires that conquer men of will and then make them irresistible instruments.  “What is your dream?—­happiness? . . . love?”