"Just music as music. Music as the one art which needs no background because every listening human being supplies one. That is where it succeeds where sculpture, for instance, fails. Music is a sort of panacea."
"Oh!" His monosyllable was a trifle disappointed. With such a cue she might at least have admitted his music into the summary.
The light from the overhead lamps fell in a circle of comparative radiance and he had time to note the charming modeling of her throat and a certain delicate nobility in the curve of her brow, where the soft hair merged with the dark shadowing of her hat brim.
"You haven't carried out your part of the contract yet," she reminded him. "I've told you what, but you haven't told me why."
"I mean to. Are you waiting for some one?"
"I am waiting for a 'bus to take me home."
"Where are you going to let it take you? Where is your home, I mean?"
"The Square," she answered, "and there is the 'bus coming, to gather me in, and you still haven't told me why I shocked your voice into that undernote of astonishment."
Paul Burton smiled, and did not yet enlighten her. Instead he went on stubbornly questioning. "The Square does not mean Madison or Union. I have deductive genius enough to infer that, because they're not places of homes. Is it Gramercy or Washington?"
The girl flashed her smile on him again and replied lightly.