minutes."

They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down,
passing and repassing others who were discussing the music.

"Such music puts my back up," Nigel continued, with energy; "makes me
feel I won't give in to it."

Isaacson could not help smiling.

"I can't look at Art from the moral plane."

"But surely Art often makes you think either morally or immorally.
Surely it gives you impulses which connect themselves with life, with
people."

Isaacson looked at him.

"I don't deny it. But these impulses are like the shadowy spectres of
the Brocken, mere outlines which presently, very soon, dissolve into the
darkness. Though great music is full of form, it often creates chaos in
those who hear it."

"Then that music should call up in you a chaos of despair."

"It does."

"It makes me want to fight."

"What?"

"All the evil and the sorrow of the world. I hate despair."

Isaacson glanced at him again, and noticed how strong he was looking,
and how joyous.

"Scotland has done you good," he said. "You look splendid to-night."

Secretly he gave a special meaning to the ordinary expression. To-night
there was a splendour in his friend which seemed to be created by an
inner strength radiating outward, informing, and expressing itself in
his figure and his features.

"I'm looking forward to the winter."

Isaacson thought of the note of triumph in Mrs. Chepstow's voice when
she said to him, "I don't feel such things this summer." Surely Nigel
now echoed that note.

An electric bell sounded. They returned to the concert-room.

They stayed till the concert was over, and then walked away down Regent
Street, which was moist and dreary, full of mist and of ugly noises.

"When do you start for Egypt?" said Meyer Isaacson.

"In about ten days, I think. Do you wish you were going there?"

"I cannot possibly escape."

"But do you wish to?"

For a moment Isaacson did not answer.

"I do and I don't," he said, after the pause. "Work holds one strangely,
because, if one is worth anything as a worker, its grip is on the soul.
Part of me wants to escape, often wants to escape."

He remembered a morning ride, his desire of his "own place."

"The whole of me wants to escape," Nigel replied.

He looked about him. People were seeking "pleasure" in the darkness. He
saw them standing at street corners, watchfully staring lest they should
miss the form of joy. Cabs containing couples rolled by,