sturbed
features with its unflattering pencil.

They started bravely, the horses running for home; but the rapid gait
soon subsided into a rhythmic trot. Rentgen spoke. She hardly recognized
his voice, so gently monotonous were his phrases.

"Dear Alixe. It is a night for confessions. You care for your husband,
you are wrapped up in his art work, you are solicitous of his future, of
his fame. It is admirable. You are a model wife for an artist. But tell
me frankly, doesn't it bore you to death? Doesn't all this talk of
music, themes, orchestration, of the public, critics, musicians,
conductors, get on your nerves? Is it any consolation for you to know
that Van Kuyp will be famous? What is his fame or his failure to you?
Where do you, Alixe Van Kuyp, come in? Why must your charming woman's
soul be sacrificed, warped to this stunted tree of another's talent? You
are silent. You say he is trying to make me deny Richard! You were never
more mistaken. I am interested in you both; interested in you as a noble
woman--stop! I mean it. And interested in Richard--well--because he is
my own creation...."

She watched him now with her heart in her eyes; he frightened her more
with these low, purring words, than if he declared open love.

"He is my own handiwork. I have created him. I have fashioned his
outlines, have wound up the mechanism that moves him to compose. Did you
ever read that terrifying thought of Yeats, the Irish poet? I've
forgotten the story, but remember the idea: 'The beautiful arts were
sent into the world to overthrow nations, and, finally, life itself,
sowing everywhere unlimited desires, like torches thrown into a burning
city.' There--'like torches thrown into a burning city!' Richard Van
Kuyp is one of my burning torches. In the spectacle of his impuissance I
find relief from my own suffering."

The booming of the Tzigane band was no longer heard--only the horses'
muffled footfalls and the intermittent chromatic drone of hidden distant
tram-cars. She shivered and shaded her face with her fan. There was
something remote from humanity in his speech. He continued with
increasing vivacity:--

"Music is a burning torch. And music, like ideas, can slay the brain.
Wagner borrowed his harmonic fire from the torch of Chopin--" She broke
in:--

"Don't talk of Chopin! Tell me more of Van Kuyp. Why do you call him
_yours_?" Her curiosity was become pain. It mastered her prudence.

"In far-away Celtic legends t