At last, when he could put it off no longer--as indeed he had no tangible reason for not going to see Madame Koller--he went. She received him in her little sitting-room, adapting at the time one of her prettiest poses for his benefit. She had heard of his triumph and was full of pretty congratulations--but in some way, she could not strike the note of praise that would harmonize. She didn’t know anything about professional men. She had lived in Europe long enough to get the notion that it was rather vulgar to work for pay--not that Pembroke got any pay in this case. But if Pembroke had married her, that weather-beaten sign “Attorney-at-Law” would have come down from his office in the village, and the office itself would have lost its tenant--so she thought. Pembroke always felt a delicacy in asking her to sing, but Madame Koller often volunteered to do it, knowing Pembroke’s passionate fondness for music, and feeling that truly on that ground they were in sympathy. Olivia Berkeley’s finished and charming playing pleased and soothed him, but it was nothing to the deep delight that Madame Koller’s music gave him--for when she sat down to the piano and playing her own accompaniments sang to him in her fervid way, it simply enchanted him--and Madame Koller knew it. Although he was exasperatingly cool under the whole battery of her smiles and glances, yet when she sang to him, he abandoned himself to the magic of a voice. While she seated herself at the piano and began to sing, Pembroke, stretched out in a vast chair, glanced sidewise at her. She did not mouth and grimace in singing as many women do. She opened her wide, handsome mouth, and seemed only to be calmly smiling, while her voice soared like a bird. She had, in short, no amateurish tricks. Her profile, with its masses of yellow hair, was imposing. She was no mere slip of a girl. When she had sung to him for the best part of an hour she thought the time had come for her reward. So she went back to her place on the sofa near the fire and posed beautifully. Pembroke almost groaned. The singing was delicious enough, but the sentimental hair-splitting had long since palled--and besides, the lady was too much in earnest. “You remained several days, did you not, at the Colonel’s?” “Yes,” said Pembroke, cheerfully, and thinking gloomily how very like a matrimonial lecture was the ensuing conversation. These interviews with Madame Koller always disinclined him extremely to giving any woman the power to ask him searching questions. Only, he did not believe Olivia Berkeley was an inquisitive woman--she was quite clever enough to find out what she wished to know without asking questions. The only remark Madame Koller made in reply was, “Ah,”--and lapsed into silence, but the silence did not last long. “Olivia must have been very charming.”