er own veins, and when she took her father's hand
it seemed to her that its strong pulses throbbed to the same rhythm;
beauty, and despair ... hope ... life ... death.

At the end, "Oh, Father--oh, Father!" she said under her breath,
imploringly, struggling to free herself from the muffling, enveloping
sense of imminent disaster. He pressed her hand hard and smiled at
her. It was his own old smile, the father-look which had been her
heart's home all her life--but it was infinitely sweeter to her now
than ever before. She had never felt closer to him. There was a pause
during which they did not speak, and then there burst upon them the
splendid tumult of "Death and Transfiguration," which, like a great
wind, swept Sylvia out of herself. She could not follow the music--she
had never heard of it before. She was beaten down, overwhelmed, freed,
as though the transfiguration were her own, from the pitiful barriers
of consciousness....

"Was the concert good?" asked Mrs. Marshall, yawning, and reaching out
of bed to kiss Sylvia sleepily. She laughed a little at their faces.
"Oh, music _is_ a madness! To spend a cheerful evening listening to
death-music, and then come back looking like Moses before the Burning
Bush!"

"Say, you ought to have seen the stunt they did with their lassos,"
cried Judith, waking in the bed on the other side of the room, and
sitting up with her black hair tousled about her face. "I'm going to
try it with the pinto when we get home."

"I _bet_ you'll do it, too," came from Lawrence the loyal, always sure
of Judith's strength, Judith's skill.

Sylvia looked at her father over their heads and smiled faintly. It
was a good smile, from a full heart.

"Aunt Victoria sent our dresses," said Judith, dropping back on the
pillow. "That big box over there. Mine has pink ribbons, and yours are
blue."

Mrs. Marshall looked at the big box with disfavor, and then at Sylvia,
now sunk in a chair, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes
dreamy and half closed. Across the room the long pasteboard box
displayed a frothy mass of white lace and pale shining ribbons. Sylvia
looked at it absently and made no move to examine it. She closed her
eyes again and beat an inaudible rhythm with her raised fingers. All
through her was ringing the upward-surging tide of sound at the end of
"Death and Transfiguration."

"Oh, go to bed, Sylvia; don't sit there maundering over the concert,"
said her mother, with a good-nat