rranged to further the students in their efforts. It was like walking
on a pavement after struggling uphill on loose sand; like breathing
sea-breezes after inhaling a polluted atmosphere.

In old days, Hadria used to be haunted by a singular recurrent
nightmare: that she was toiling up a steep mountain made of hard
slippery rock, the summit always receding as she advanced. Behind her
was a vast precipice down which she must fall if she lost her footing;
and always, she saw hands without bodies attached to them placing stones
in the path, so that they rolled down and had to be evaded at the peril
of her life. And each time, after one set of stones was evaded, and she
thought there would be a time of respite, another batch was set rolling,
amid thin, scarcely audible laughter, which came on the storm-wind that
blew precipice-wards across the mountain; and invariably she awoke just
as a final avalanche of cruel stones had sent her reeling over the
hideous verge.

One is disposed to make light of the sufferings gone through in a dream,
though it would trouble most of us to explain why, since the agony of
mind is often as extreme as possibly could be endured in actual life.
From the day of her arrival in Paris, Hadria was never again tormented
with this nightmare.

Composition went on rapidly now. Soon there was a little pile of new
work for M. Jouffroy's inspection. He was delighted, criticizing
severely, but always encouraging to fresh efforts. As for the
publishing, that was a different matter. In spite of M. Jouffroy's
recommendation, publishers could not venture on anything of a character
so unpopular. The music had merit, but it was eccentric. M. Jouffroy was
angry. He declared that he would play something of Madame's at the next
Chatelet concert. There would be opposition, but he would carry his
point. And he did. But the audience received it very coldly. Although
Hadria had expected such a reception, she felt a chill run through her,
and a sinking of the heart. It was like a cold word that rebuffs an
offer of sympathy, or an appeal for it. It sent her back into depths of
loneliness, and reminded her how cut off she was from the great majority
of her fellows, after all. And then Guy de Maupassant's dreadful
"Solitude" came to her memory. There is no way (the hero of the sketch
asserts) by which a man can break the eternal loneliness to which he is
foredoomed. He cannot convey to others his real impressions or emotio