not barred, I assure you. My music--is Woman. Beauty is a promise of
happiness, Stendhal says. I go further: Life--the woman one has;
Art--the woman one loves!"

She was startled. Her aunt and Madame Kéroulan had retired to the end of
the garden, and only a big bee, brumming overhead, was near. He had
arisen with the pontifical air of a man who has a weighty gospel to
expound. He encircled with his potent personality the imagination of his
listener; the hypnotic quality of his written word was carried leagues
farther in effect by his trained, soothing voice. Flattered, no longer
frightened, her nerves deliciously assaulted by this coloured rhetoric,
Ermentrude yielded her intellectual assent. She did not comprehend. She
felt only the rhythms of his speech, as sound swallowed sense. He held
her captive with a pause, and his eloquent eyes--they were of an
extraordinary lustre--completed the subjugation of her will.

"Only kissed hands are white," he murmured, and suddenly she felt a
velvety kiss on her left hand. Ermentrude did not pretend to follow the
words of her aunt and Madame Kéroulan as they stopped before a bed of
June roses. Nor did she remember how she reached the pair. The one vivid
reality of her life was the cruel act of her idol. She was not conscious
of blushing, nor did she feel that she had grown pale. His wife treated
her with impartial indifference, at times a smile crossing her face,
with its implication--to Ermentrude--of selfish reserves. But this
hateful smile cut her to the soul--one more prisoner at his chariot
wheels, it proclaimed! Kéroulan was as unconcerned as if he had written
a poetic line. He had expected more of an outburst, more of a rebuff;
the absolute snapping of the web he had spun surprised him. His choicest
music had been spread for the eternal banquet, but the invited one
tarried. Very well! If not to-day, to-morrow! He repeated a verse of