er turn to be disagreeable.

In his music room, Van Kuyp read a volume of verse. He did not hear his
wife enter. It pained her when she saw his serious face with its
undistinguished features and dogged expression. No genius this, was her
hasty verdict, as she quickly went to him and put a hand on his head.
It was her hand now that was hot. He raised eyes, dolent with dreams.

"Well?" he queried.

"You are a curious man!" she said wonderingly. "Aren't you interested in
the news about your symphonic poem?" He smiled the smile of the fatuous
elect. "I imagine it went all right," he languidly replied. "I heard it
at rehearsal yesterday--I suppose Theleme took the _tempi_ too slow!"

She sighed and asked:--

"What are you reading a night like this?" His expression became
animated.

"A volume of Celtic poetry--I've found a stunning idea for music. What a
tone-poem it will make! Here it is. What colour, what rhythms. It is
called The Shadowy Horses. 'I hear the shadowy horses, their long manes
a-shake'--"

"Who gave you the poem?"

"Oh, Rentgen, of course. Did you see him to-night?"

"You dear boy! You must be tired to death. Better rest. The critics will
get you up early enough."

Through interminable hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she
had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for
the strong as the spinning of cobwebs...."

II

It was pompous July and the Van Kuyps were still in Paris. They lived
near Passy--from her windows high in the air Alixe caught the green at
dawn as the sun lifted level rays. Richard was writing his new
tone-poem, which the Societe Harmonique accepted provisionally for the
season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the
exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake. He was a critic
who wrote brilliantly of music in the terms of painting, of plastic arts
in the technical phraseology of music, and by him the drama was
discussed purely as literature. This deliberate and delicate confusion
of aesthetics clouded the public mind. He described Sordello as a vast
mural fresco, a Puvis de Chavannes in tone, a symphonic drama wherein
agonized the shadowy AEschylean protagonist. Even sculpture was rifled
for analogies, and Van Kuyp to his bewilderment found himself called
"The Rodin of Music"; at other times, "Richard Strauss II," or a "Tonal
Browning"; finally, he was adjured to swerve not from the path he had so
wonderfully he