Preceding her, he led the way to a room of which the floor, inlaid and waxed, was rugless. The windows were not curtained, they were shuttered. In the centre was a grand and a bench. Afar, at the other end, masking a door, was a portiere, the colour of hyacinth. Near it, were two unupholstered chairs; one, white; the other, black. Save for these, save too for a succession of mirrors and of lights, the room was bare. In addition, it was spacious, a long oblong, ceiled high with light frescoes, the proper aviary for a song-bird. Cassy curtsied to it. At table she had not wanted to sing. The mere sight of this room inspired. Paliser opened the piano and, seating himself, ran his long thin fingers over the keys. He was heating them, preluding a score, passing from it to another. Presently he looked up; she nodded and the _Ah, non giunge_ floated from her. "Brava!" Paliser muttered as the final trill drifted away. Again he looked up. "You will be a very great artist." He did not mean it. He judged her voice colourful but lacking in carriage. Cassy, leaning forward, struck the keys, giving him the note and again she sang, this time the _Libiamo_, which, old as the hills, claptrap, utterly detestable, none the less served to display the bravura quality of her voice. When it passed, Paliser sprang up, faced her. "Open your mouth! There! Wide!" Cassy, familiar with the ritual, obeyed. Paliser peered into the strawberry of her throat. It was deep as a well and he moved back. "You have the organ but you do not know how to use it. You don't know how to breathe." Cassy forgot that he was young, that she was, that in the great room in the great house they were alone. Through the shutters came the smell of lilacs, the sorceries of spring. In the sexlessness of art these things were unnoticed. For the first time she liked him. It was his frankness that drew her, though if he had been a frank old woman she would have liked him as well. "My father says that. He says it is Ma Tamby's fault. He can't bear her." For a while they discussed it. Paliser maintaining that were it not for the war she ought to go to Paris and Cassy asserting, though without conviction, that the specialty of the Conservatoire consisted in dried fruit. Finally she said: "It must be late. I have a wrap somewhere and oh! my orchids." The young person was summoned. The wrap was recovered, the orchids reappeared. Paliser, helping Cassy with the wrap, said: "Shall I see it here again?" He knew he would but he thought it civil to ask. Cassy too had her thoughts. The freedom with which, during the ham-and-eggs episode, his eyes had investigated her, where was it? On Sunday he had bored her to tears. That also had gone. During the past hour or two he had shown himself reasonably intelligent, unpresuming, without offensiveness of any kind. With a movement of the hand she lifted the wrap at her neck. "Here?"