Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/116

 At last, when he could put it off no longer—as indeed he had no tangible reason for not going to see Madame Koller—he went. She received him in her little sitting-room, adapting at the time one of her prettiest poses for his benefit. She had heard of his triumph and was full of pretty congratulations—but in some way, she could not strike the note of praise that would harmonize. She didn't know anything about professional men. She had lived in Europe long enough to get the notion that it was rather vulgar to work for pay—not that Pembroke got any pay in this case. But if Pembroke had married her, that weather-beaten sign "Attorney-at-Law" would have come down from his office in the village, and the office itself would have lost its tenant—so she thought.

Pembroke always felt a delicacy in asking her to sing, but Madame Koller often volunteered to do it, knowing Pembroke's passionate fondness for music, and feeling that truly on that ground they were in sympathy. Olivia Berkeley's finished and charming playing pleased and soothed him, but it was nothing to the deep delight that Madame Koller's music gave him—for when she sat down to the piano and playing her own accompaniments sang to him in her fervid way, it simply enchanted him—and Madame Koller knew it. Although he was exasperatingly cool under the whole battery of her smiles and glances, yet when she sang to him, he abandoned himself to the magic of a voice.

While she seated herself at the piano and began