"Who gave you the poem?"

"Oh, Rentgen, of course. Did you see him to-night?"

"You dear boy! You must be tired to death. Better rest. The critics will
get you up early enough."

Through interminable hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she
had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for
the strong as the spinning of cobwebs...."


II

It was pompous July and the Van Kuyps were still in Paris. They lived
near Passy--from her windows high in the air Alixe caught the green at
dawn as the sun lifted level rays. Richard was writing his new
tone-poem, which the Société Harmonique accepted provisionally for the
season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the
exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake. He was a critic
who wrote brilliantly of music in the terms of painting, of plastic arts
in the technical phraseology of music, and by him the drama was
discussed purely as literature. This deliberate and delicate confusion
of æsthetics clouded the public mind. He described Sordello as a vast
mural fresco, a Puvis de Chavannes in tone, a symphonic drama wherein
agonized the shadowy Æschylean protagonist. Even sculpture was rifled
for analogies, and Van Kuyp to his bewilderment found himself called
"The Rodin of Music"; at other times, "Richard Strauss II," or a "Tonal
Browning"; finally, he was adjured to swerve not from the path he had so