"Men? Well, what of that? Yours doesn't!--and you don't want anybody else's men, do you?" "None that I have seen so far," admitted Joan. "But you never can tell. They say it's in the dangerous thirties that we really begin to sit up and take notice--Anyway, I shall _never_ be married and settled enough to relish the idea of men running away from me as if I were something catching!" So she continued to avoid, rather than to cultivate, the company of the Intelligentzia, thereby denying herself her birthright. And at twenty-five, a leading citizeness of her community, with engagements so thick on her calendar that there was barely time for an occasional meal at home, she woke every morning with the thought, "If something doesn't happen to-day, I shall scream!" CHAPTER XLVI At that stage of life, something usually does happen.... Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it. The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind. "We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the Beauty of the World." "How _can_ one enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly of herself.... Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother had once made an English version of it: "Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby, (Byushky, byu), Smiles the moon upon thy cradle, Smiles thy mother, too. "Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,-- (Byushky, byu). Blood and tears and fear and glory Shall I know through you. "But to-night thou art my small one, (Byushky, byu), With the moon to bless thy slumber, And thy mother, too." Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian. She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who occasionally entertained musicians--But she was mistaken. It came from her own house. She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside. Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.