When she appeared that morning, behind the hollyhocks, Rose was about to spring up, and Peter did stand, expectant, with his charming smile. Electra at once made proper disclaimers, and insisted that the sitter's pose should not be broken and that it would be an immense entertainment to see the work go on. Peter brought a chair out of the arbor, and she sat down, erect and handsome, while Rose sank back into her unconstrained reclining. Rose wore the simplest dress, and her slender arms were bare. There were about her the signs of tasks abandoned, even of pleasures dropped and not remembered--the book half closed upon her finger, the rose and fan. Her great hat with its long feather lay beside her on the ground, and Electra, justly appraising its picturesqueness and value, thought, with brief distaste, that it looked as if it might belong to an actress. She asked her question at once and Rose answered. No, her father would not be here in time for the important meeting. She had no doubt he would indeed have said more than a few words, since the entertainment had fallen through. Here Electra interrupted her delicately and challenged the use of that term for so serious an issue. It could hardly be called an entertainment; they had simply been unable to consider the topic fixed upon, and it was necessary to find a substitute. "Let me do something," said Rose, with her appealing grace. "I'll sing for them." That accounted for her again, Electra thought, the unconsidered ease, perhaps the boldness. She belonged to public life; yet as such she might well be taken into account. "What do you sing?" she asked. Rose forgot all about her picture and sat up, looking quite in earnest. Peter held his brush reproachfully poised. "I tell you what I can do," she said, after a moment's thinking. "I can give a little talk on contemporary music--what they are doing in France, in Germany. I can give some personal data about living musicians--things they wouldn't mind. And I really sing very well. Peter, boy, tell the lady I sing well." "She sings adorably," said Peter. "She has a nightingale in her throat:-- "'Two larks and a thrush, All the birds in the bush.' "You never heard anything more sympathetic. I never did." The "Peter, boy," had spoiled it. Electra grew colder. She wished she were able to be as easy as she liked; but she never could be, with other people perpetually doing and saying things in such bad taste. "The club is composed of ladies who know the best music," she heard herself saying, and realized that it sounded like a child's copy-book.