which the symphony
was played?

While the Music-Lover, leaning back in his seat, was idly turning over
this thought, the _Andante_ began, and all definite questioning and
reasoning were absorbed in the calm, satisfying melody which flowed
from the violas and 'cellos.

But now a singular change came over the half-conscious impression
which his eyes received as they rested on the orchestra. It was no
longer a huge and strangely fashioned instrument, intricate in
construction, perfect in adjustment, that he was watching.

It was a company of human beings, trained and disciplined to common
action, understanding one another through the sharing of a certain
technical knowledge, and bound together by a unity of will which was
expressed in their central obedience to the leader. The arms, the
hands, the lips of these hundred persons were weaving together the
many-coloured garment of music, because their minds knew the pattern,
and their wills worked together in the design.

Here was the wonderful hidden system of communication, more magical
than any mechanism, just because it was less perfect, just because it
left room, along each separate channel, for the coming in of those
slight, incalculable elements of personal emotion which lend the touch
of life to rhythm and tone.

The instruments were but the tools. The composer was the
master-designer. The leader and his orchestra were the weavers of the
rich robe of sound, in which alone the hidden spirit of Music,
daughter of Psyche and Amor, becomes perceptible to mortal sense.

The smooth and harmonious action of the players seemed to lend a new
charm, delicate and indefinable, to the development of the clear and
heart-strengthening theme with its subtle variations and its powerful,
emphatic close, like the fullness of meaning in the last line of a
noble sonnet.

III

In the pause that followed, the Music-Lover let himself drift quietly
with the thoughts of peace and concord awakened by this loveliest of
andantes.

The beginning of the _Scherzo_ found him, somehow or other, in a new
relation to the visible image of the orchestra. The weird, almost
supernatural music, murmured at first by the 'cellos and
double-basses, then proclaimed by the horns as if by the trumpet of
Fate itself; the repetition of the same struggle of emotions which had
marked the first movement, but now more tense, more passionate, more
human, the strange, fantastic mingling of comedy and tragedy