e worked as if he were going to cry or were frightened.
He leaned over and whispered something to her. It struck her as curious
that he was really quite timid, like an old beggar. "Oh, let me ALONE!"
she cried miserably between her teeth. He vanished, disappeared like the
Devil in a play. But in the mean time something had got away from her;
she could not remember how the violins came in after the horns, just
there. When her cape blew up, perhaps--Why did these men torment her? A
cloud of dust blew in her face and blinded her. There was some power
abroad in the world bent upon taking away from her that feeling with
which she had come out of the concert hall. Everything seemed to sweep
down on her to tear it out from under her cape. If one had that, the
world became one's enemy; people, buildings, wagons, cars, rushed at one
to crush it under, to make one let go of it. Thea glared round her at
the crowds, the ugly, sprawling streets, the long lines of lights, and
she was not crying now. Her eyes were brighter than even Harsanyi had
ever seen them. All these things and people were no longer remote and
negligible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her, they
were there to take something from her. Very well; they should never have
it. They might trample her to death, but they should never have it. As
long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for
it, work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it, time after
time, height after height. She could hear the crash of the orchestra
again, and she rose on the brasses. She would have it, what the trumpets
were singing! She would have it, have it,--it! Under the old cape she
pressed her hands upon her heaving bosom, that was a little girl's no
longer.

VI

ONE afternoon in April, Theodore Thomas, the conductor of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, had turned out his desk light and was about to leave
his office in the Auditorium Building, when Harsanyi appeared in the
doorway. The conductor welcomed him with a hearty hand-grip and threw
off the overcoat he had just put on. He pushed Harsanyi into a chair and
sat down at his burdened desk, pointing to the piles of papers and
railway folders upon it.

"Another tour, clear to the coast. This traveling is the part of my work
that grinds me, Andor. You know what it means: bad food, dirt, noise,
exhaustion for the men and for me. I'm not so young as I once was. It's
time I quit the highway.