“Oh, no, no.” Nan shrank from such an ordeal and her tones evinced such fright that her companion laughed.
“Oh, then we won’t,” he said. “I say, you look stunning. I dressed for the occasion, too, as you see. These are my very best flannels and I hope you think the red tie is becoming.”
Nan thought it was vastly so, but she could only echo feebly, “Very becoming.”
“Yours is tremendously so, an awfully jolly bit of color.” He stood off and looked her up and down with half-closed eyes in the impersonal way that artists have. “I like you in white,” he continued. “That’s a good scheme of color, too, green, white, yellow, with a dash of dark hair for a sharp accent Pretty nice that. Well, there is to be no boring you with posing to-day. What shall I play?” He took his violin from its case and began to tune it.
“Mein liebe schwan?” said Nan questioningly.
“Good! Somehow suits the landscape, doesn’t it, the lake and all? Here goes.”
He stood up while Nan took her place under a tree on a grass-hidden rock, to listen, and in a moment her soul was filled with delight. The swan song, and here was Lohengrin! Little thrills of delicious joy seemed to ooze out of her very finger-tips as she leaned back against the tree to hear. The swan song melted into “Elsa’s Dream,” and then into the “Höchtes Vertrauen.” The young man played well, his head thrown back as he watched his hearer from under his lashes. He saw the color come and go, the frequent trembling of her lips, the far-away look in her eyes. “My, what a lot of temperament the girl has,” he said to himself. “It is worth a king’s ransom to be like that.”
He put down his violin. “What’ll you take for your gift of appreciation, Miss Nan?” he asked.
Nan came back from the clouds. “It isn’t for sale,” she answered. “But why do you want mine? Haven’t you enough for yourself?”
“Well, yes, but I’d like to hand yours over to some person who hasn’t any.”