If Norman anticipated that she would be nervous before the task of receiving in her humbleness so distinguished a visitor, he must have been straightway disappointed. Whether from a natural lack of that sense of social differences which is developed to the most pitiful snobbishness in New York or from her youth and inexperience, she received him as if he had been one of the neighbors dropping in after supper. And it was Norman who was ill at ease. Nothing is more disconcerting to a man accustomed to be received with due respect to his importance than to find himself put upon the common human level and compelled to "make good" all over again from the beginning. He felt--he knew--that he was an humble candidate for her favor--a candidate with the chances perhaps against him. The tiny parlor had little in it beside the upright piano because there was no space. But the paper, the carpet and curtains, the few pieces of furniture, showed no evidence of bad taste, of painful failure at the effort to "make a front." He was in the home of poor people, but they were obviously people who made a highly satisfactory best of their poverty. And in the midst of it all the girl shone like the one evening star in the mystic opalescence of twilight. "We weren't sure you were coming," said she. "I'll call father. . . . No, I'll take you back to his workshop. He's easier to get acquainted with there." "Won't you play something for me first? Or--perhaps you sing?" "A very little," she admitted. "Not worth hearing." "I'm sure I'd like it. I want to get used to my surroundings before I tackle the--the biology." Without either hesitation or shyness, she seated herself at the piano. "I'll sing the song I've just learned." And she began. Norman moved to the chair that gave him a view of her in profile. For the next five minutes he was witness to one of those rare, altogether charming visions that linger in the memory in freshness and fragrance until memory itself fades away. She sat very straight at the piano, and the position brought out all the long lines of her figure--the long, round white neck and throat, the long back and bosom, the long arms and legs--a series of lovely curves. It has been scientifically demonstrated that pale blue is pre-eminently the sex color. It certainly was pre-eminently _her_ color, setting off each and every one of her charms and suggesting the roundness and softness and whiteness her drapery concealed. She was one of those rare beings whose every pose is instinct with grace. And her voice--It was small, rather high, at times almost shrill. But in every note of its register there sounded a mysterious, melancholy-sweet call to the responding nerves of man.