Late in the evening, when almost all the guests had departed, Helen seemed seized with a sudden determination to bring Anne into prominence. Mr. Dexter still lingered, and the artist. Also Ward Heathcote.
"Anne, will you sing now? First with me, then alone?" she said, going to the piano.
A bright flush rose in Anne's face; the prominent blue eyes of the German artist were fixed upon her; Gregory Dexter had turned toward her with his usual prompt attention. Even the indolent Heathcote looked up as Helen spoke. But having once decided to do a thing, Anne knew no way save to do it; having accepted Helen's generous kindness, she must now do what Helen asked in return. She rose in silence, and crossed the brightly lighted room on her way to the piano. Few women walk well; by well, is meant naturally. Helen was graceful; she had the lithe shape and long step which give a peculiar swaying grace, like that of elm branches. Yet Helen's walk belonged to the drawing-room, or at best the city pavement; one could not imagine her on a country road. Anne's gait was different. As she crossed the room alone, it drew upon her for the first time the full attention of the three gentlemen who were present. Blum stared gravely. Dexter's eyes moved up to her face, as if he saw it now with new interest. Heathcote leaned back on the sofa with an amused expression, glancing from Anne to Helen, as if saying, "I understand."
Anne wore one of Helen's gifts, a soft silk of pale gray, in deference to her mourning garb; the dress was high over the shoulders, but cut down squarely in front and behind, according to a fashion of the day. The sleeves came to the elbow only; the long skirt was severely plain. They had taken off their gloves, and the girl's beautiful arms were conspicuous, as well as her round, full, white throat.
The American Venus is thin.
American girls are slight; they have visible collar-bones and elbows. When they pass into the fullness of womanhood (if they pass at all), it is suddenly, leaving no time for the beautiful pure virginal outlines which made Anne Douglas an exception to her kind. Anne's walk was entirely natural, her poise natural; yet so perfect were her proportions that even Tante, artificial and French as she was, refrained from the suggestions and directions as to step and bearing which encircled the other pupils like an atmosphere.
The young girl's hair had been arranged by Helen's maid, under Helen's own direction, in a plain Greek knot, leaving the shape of the head, and the small ear, exposed; and as she stood by the piano, waiting, she looked (as Helen had intended her to look) like some young creature from an earlier world, startled and shy, yet too proud to run away.
They sang together; and in singing Anne recovered her self-possession. Then Helen asked her to sing without accompaniment a little island ballad which was one of her favorites, and leading her to the centre of the room, left her there alone. Poor Anne! But, moved by the one desire of pleasing Helen, she clasped her hands in simple child-like fashion, and began to sing, her eyes raised slightly so as to look above the faces of her audience. It was an old-fashioned ballad or chanson, in the patois of the voyageurs, with a refrain in a minor key, and it told of the vanishing of a certain petite Marie, and the sorrowing of her mother—a common-place theme long drawn out, the constantly recurring refrain, at first monotonous, becoming after a while sweet to the ear, like the wash of small waves on a smooth beach. But it was the ending upon which Helen relied for her effect. Suddenly the lament of the long-winded mother ended, the time changed, and a verse followed picturing the rapture of the lovers as they fled away in their sharp-bowed boat, wing and wing, over the blue lake. Anne sang this as though inspired; she forgot her audience, and sang as she had always sung it on the island for Rast and the children. Her voice floated through the house, she shaded her eyes with her hand, and leaned forward, gazing, as though she saw the boat across the water, and then she smiled, as, with a long soft note, the song ended.
But the instant it was over, her timidity came back with double force, and she hastily sought refuge beside Helen, her voice gone, in her eyes a dangerous nearness to tears.
There was now an outburst of compliments from Blum; but Helen kindly met and parried them. Mr. Dexter began a few well-chosen sentences of praise; but in the midst of his fluent adjectives, Anne glanced up so beseechingly that he caught the mist in her eyes, and instantly ceased. Nor was this all; he opened a discussion with Miss Teller, dragging in Heathcote also (against the latter's will), and thus secured for Anne the time to recover herself. She felt this quick kindness, and was grateful. She decided that she liked him; and she wondered whether Helen liked him also.