The class, attired in white, appeared to average much older than Dulcie. He could see her now, in her reconstructed communion dress, holding the big bouquet which he had sent her, one madonna lily of which she had detached and pinned over her breast.
Her features were composed and delicately flushed; her bobbed hair was tucked up, revealing the snowy neck.
One girl after another advanced and read or spoke, performing the particular parlour trick assigned her in the customary and perfectly unremarkable manner characteristic of such affairs.
Rapturous parental demonstrations greeted each effort; piano, violin and harp filled in nobly. A slight haze of dust, incident to pedalistic applause, invaded the place; there was an odour of flowers in the heated atmosphere.
Glancing at a programme which he had found on his seat, Barres read: “Song: Dulcie Soane.”
Looking up at her where she sat on the stage, among her comrades in white, he noticed that her eyes were busy searching the audience—possibly for him, he thought, experiencing an oddly pleasant sensation at the possibility.
The time at length arrived for Dulcie to do her parlour trick; she rose and came forward, clasping the big, fragrant bouquet, prettily flushed but self-possessed. The harp began a little minor prelude—something Irish and not very modern. Then Dulcie’s pure, untrained voice stole winningly through the picked harp-strings’ hesitation:
“Heart of a colleen,