“Please don’t,” she said briskly, “it’s purely a business affair. How much will she pay?” Dan was rather shocked. “Anything you like.” And her bad humor faded at his tone, and she smiled at him. “Well, I’ll tell Roach that. I guess it’ll make my singing a sure thing.” She changed her position and drew a long sigh as though she were very tired, leaned her blond head with its soft disorder back on the pillow, put both her folded hands under her cheek and turned her face toward Dan. The most delicate coral-like color began to mount her cheeks, and her gray eyes regained their light. “Will two thousand dollars be too much to ask?” she said gently. If she had said two million to the young fellow who had not yet begun to spend his fortune, which as far as he was concerned was nothing but a name, it would not have been too much to him; not too much to have given to this small white creature with her lovely flushed face, and her glorious hair. “Whatever is your price, Miss Lane, goes.” “I’ll sing three songs: one from _Mandalay_, an English ballad and something or other, I don’t know what now, and I expect you don’t realize how cheaply you are getting them.” She laughed, and began to hum a familiar air. “I wish you would sing just one song for me.” “For another thousand?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. “What song is it?” And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give form to words that were so full of spell to him, she said deliciously: “Why, can you see a London drawing-room listening to me sing a Presbyterian hymn tune?” Without lifting her head from the pillow she began in a charming undertone, her gray eyes fixed on his: “From Greenland’s icy mountains, From India’s coral strands, Where Afric’s sunny fountains Roll down their golden sands.” Blair, near her, turned pale. There rose in him the same feeling that she had stirred years ago in the little church, and at the same time others. He had lost his father since then, and he thought of him now, but that big, sad emotion was not the one that swayed him. “Please stop,” he pleaded; “don’t go on. Say, there’s something in that hymn that hurts.” Letty Lane, unconscious of how subtly she was playing, laughed, and suddenly remembered that Dan had sat before her that day by the side of old Mr. Blair. She asked abruptly: “Why does the Duchess of Breakwater want me to sing?” “Because she’s crazy about your voice.” “Is she awfully rich?” “Um ... I don’t know.” Letty Lane flashed a look at him. “Oh,” she said coolly, “I guess she won’t pay the price then.” Dan said: “Yes, she will; yes, she will, all right.” “Now,” Letty Lane went on, “if it were a charity affair, I could sing for nothing, and I don’t doubt the duchess, if she is as benevolent as you say she is, could get me up some kind of a charity show.”