The thing went none too well. Amy was the only one who had seen the music before, and she was the only one who particularly wanted to make music now. However, the immediate need was not that the song should go well, but that it should go: that it should go on, that it should go on and on, repetitiously, until it should come (or even not come) to go better. She slid her bow across the strings with tasteful passion. She enjoyed still more than her own tones the tones of Cope's voice,--tones which, whether in happy unison with hers or not, were, after all, seldom misplaced, whatever they may have lacked in heartiness and confidence. It was a short piece, and on the third time it went rather well. "How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, at the right moment. Cope smiled deprecatingly. "It might be made to go very nicely," he said. "It _has_ gone very nicely," insisted Amy; "it did, this last time." She waved her bow with some vivacity. She had heaved the whole of her young self into the work; she had been buoyed up by Cope's tones, which, with repetition, had gathered assurance if not expressiveness; and she based her estimate of the general effect on the impression which her own inner nature had experienced. And her impression was heightened when Pearson, forging forward, and ignoring both Cope and Carolyn, thanked her richly and emphatically for her part--a part which, to him, seemed the whole. Hortense, who had kept her place behind the large lampshade, twisted her interlocked fingers and said no word. Foster, who had disposed himself on an inconspicuous couch, kept his own counsel. After all, _omne ignotum_: Cope's singing had sounded better from upstairs. At close range a ringing assertiveness had somehow failed. Cope had come with no desire to extend his stay beyond the limits of an evening call. He declined to sing on his own account, and soon rose as if to make his general adieux. "You won't give us one of your own songs, then?" asked Medora Phillips, in a disappointed tone. "And at my dinner----" No, she could not quite say that, at her dinner, Cope, whatever he had failed to do, had contributed no measure of entertainment for her guests. "Give us a recitation, then," persisted Medora; "or tell us a story. Or make up"--here she indulged herself in an airily imperious flight--"a story of your own on the spot." A trifling request, truly. But---- "Heavens!" said Cope. "I am not an author--still less an _improvvisatore_." "I am sure you could be," returned Medora fondly. "Just try."