Rose was entirely unaffected, and she went at once to the piano in the room beyond, and seating herself began to play the first soft notes of a prelude. Fox had followed her and took his place near the instrument, again observing her with keen appreciation; her sweetness, her whiteness of soul had taken possession of his imagination with a force which he had supposed, until this moment, impossible. For, after one bitter and humiliating experience in the drama of love and passion, he had withdrawn with seared sensibilities, and assuming a new attitude had regarded women as a detached spectator, fancying that he possessed a high degree of eclecticism in comparing the emotional phases of their existence which should be henceforth quite apart from his; love and marriage were mere episodes in a man’s life, and feeling no need of assuming either the duties or the responsibilities of the latter state he had not seriously contemplated the former as anything but a remote possibility. Besides, in a curious way, his life seemed to be linked with Margaret White’s; she continued to make claims upon him, to tacitly presuppose his devotion, and he had been too uncertain of himself, too indolent, too easily drifting with the tide to make any effort to free himself from the shackles of that old love affair. But all these things slipped out of mind as he sat listening to Rose’s song. It was a simple Italian love-song, soft, caressing, gently plaintive, and peculiarly suited to her voice, but the air and the words were nothing compared with that voice. When Mrs. Allestree spoke of it, Fox had thought of it as the usual vocal accomplishment of a raw schoolgirl, something young and sweet, no doubt, but full of crudity and weakness. Instead, he was suddenly aware that he was listening to a voice which had a scope and richness beyond any that he had ever heard except in opera, and there were but few of the great singers who had such a gift as this. The thrill and exquisite freshness of its tones touched his very soul. He found himself listening with a keen feeling of depression; this gift of hers lifted her at once into another sphere than his, and he reflected that her beautiful body was an exquisite envelope for the spirit, her voice its divine interpretation.