"_Nobil signors_," she sang, her voice lingering.

And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in her rendition.

Melody after melody, score after score, product of the greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never definitely realized what privilege had been his.

She slipped on and on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no florid triviality from any land.

With a voice which had mastered the world, she sang the best of the masters of the world.