you!"

The musician, aroused by this wordy assault, looked from one to the
other with his heavy eyes, the eyes of an owl rudely disturbed. Alixe
almost danced her excitement. She hummed shrilly and grasped Van Kuyp's
arm in the gayest rebounding humour.

"Why don't you speak, Maestro?"

"I didn't join you because I was too busy at my score. Listen, children!
I have sketched the beginning of The Shadowy Horses. You remember the
Yeats poem, Rentgen? Listen!"

Furiously he attacked the instrument, from which escaped accents of
veritable torture; a delirium of tone followed, meagre melodies fighting
for existence in the boiling madness of it all; it was the parody of a
parody, the music of yesterday masquerading as the music of to-morrow.
Alixe nervously watched the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and
morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by
forebodings, crowded her alert brain. She desperately clutched her
husband's shoulder; he finished in a burst of sheer pounding and brutal
roaring. Then she threw her arms about him in an ecstasy of pride--her
confidence was her only anchorage.

"There, Elvard Rentgen! What did you tell me? I dare you to say that
this music is not marvellous, not original!" Her victorious gaze, in
which floated indomitable faith, challenged him, as she drew the head of
her husband to her protecting bosom. The warring of exasperated eyes
endured a moment; to Alixe it seemed eternity. Rentgen bowed and went
away from this castle of cobwebs, deeply stirred by the wife's tender