"Nor have you," he returned, smiling. "And amiability being one of your many admirable qualities, the effort you propose making on my behalf won't cost you much." Since the time of year was unsuited to sitting indoors, the Arnotts had had the grounds lighted, and engaged some musicians to play at intervals during the evening. Pamela, who possessed a very fine contralto voice, sang once towards the finish of the evening, standing on the brilliantly lighted stoep outside the drawing-room windows, a fair, radiant, girlish figure, singing with extraordinary passion that seductive song from Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila," "_Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix_." Dare, a little apart from the rest, took up his position beside a tall bush of gardenias and listened with absorbed attention until the finish of the song, his keen eyes never leaving the singer's face, lost in a wondering rapture of admiration for the singer as much as for the song. "_Ah! reponds a ma tendresse_..." The seductive words, the seductive tones, thrilled him. He was Samson listening to Delilah,--a Delilah sweet and charming and womanly, without the sting of poison in her passionate entreating. When the song ended he still remained motionless, not joining in the applause which followed, heedless of everything about him, conscious only of one fair girlish face, of a pair of limpid eyes, blue as the African sky itself, and of the tender curve of sweet lips made for laughter. For five years he had been searching for this face, and he found it here--the centre jewel in another man's crown of happiness. "_Her price is far above rubies; the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her; her children rise up and call her blessed_..." Involuntarily the words came to his mind with a sense of their appropriateness. Where had he heard them? He did not know. But assuredly they were written for her. He turned his head and glanced at the people near him. With the finish of the song they had started talking again, carrying on the conversations which the music had interrupted. No one seemed to have been impressed, as he had been, with the moving power of the seductive voice. Possibly they had heard it often before: he heard it for the first time, and felt profoundly stirred. When he looked round again she had moved away, and formed one of a gay group on the stoep. He waited until she left this group, then, when he saw her alone for a moment, he seized his chance and joined her. Her guests had been pressing her to sing again, but she declined. For some reason Dare was glad she refused. He wanted no other song, perhaps with an altogether different sentiment, to sweep away the emotions which the first song had produced in his soul. He was oddly stirred and excited, moved out of his ordinary calm by a sensuous love song finely rendered by a woman who was an artist, and yet surprisingly natural.