Nor did he. He sang with care rather than with volume, with discretion rather than with abandon. The "simple accompaniments" went off with but a slight hitch or two, yet the "resonant voice" was somehow, somewhere lost. Possibly Cope gave too great heed to his hostess' caution; but it seemed as if a voice essentially promising had slipped through some teacher's none too competent hands, or--what was quite as serious--as if some temperamental brake were operating to prevent the complete expression of the singer's nature. Lassen, Grieg, Rubinstein--all these were carried through rather cautiously, perhaps a little mechanically; and there was a silence. Hortense broke it. "Parnassus, yes. And finally comes Apollo." She reached over and murmured to Mrs. Phillips: "None too skillful on the lyre, and none too strong in the lungs...." Medora spoke up loudly and promptly. "Do you know, I think I've heard you sing before." "Possibly," Cope said, turning his back on the keyboard. "I sang in the University choir for a year or two." "In gown and mortar-board? 'Come, Holy Spirit,' and all that?" "Yes; I sang solos now and then." "Of course," she said. "I remember now. But I never saw you before without your mortar-board. That changes the forehead. Yes, you're yourself," she went on, adding to her previous pleasure the further pleasure of recognition. "You've earned your tea," she added. "Hortense," she said over her shoulder to the dark girl behind the sofa, "will you--? No; I'll pour, myself." She slid into her place at table and got things to going. There was an interval which Cope might have employed in praising the artistic aptitudes of this variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to say,--or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any further comment on his own performance. Mrs. Phillips accompanied him, on his way out, as far as the hall. She looked up at him questioningly. "You don't like my poor girls," she said. "You don't find them clever; you don't find them interesting." "On the contrary," he rejoined, "I have spent a delightful hour." Must he go on and confess that he had developed no particular dexterity in dealing with the younger members of the opposite sex? "No, you don't care for them one bit," she insisted. She tried to look rebuking, reproachful; yet some shade of expression conveyed to him a hint that her protest was by no means sincere: if he really didn't, it was no loss--it was even a possible gain. "It's you who don't care for me," he returned. "I'm _vieux jeu_." "Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more work on the foreground." Cope, on his way eastward, in the early evening, passed near the trolley tracks, the Greek lunch-counter, without a thought; he was continuing his letter to "Dear Arthur":