I sit outside, the world will say--we have to be careful of our
unsmirched reputations--we poor critics and slave-drivers of the deaf."

She drew her hand gently away. He had held it, playfully tapping it as
he slowly delivered himself in short sentences. He was a Dane, but his
French and English were without trace of accent; certain intonations
alone betrayed his Scandinavian origin.

Alixe could not refuse, for the moment he finished speaking she heard a
too familiar motive, the ponderous phrase in the brass choir which Van
Kuyp intended as the thematic label for his hero, "Sordello."

"Ah, there's your Browning in tone for you," whispered the critic. She
wished him miles away. The draperies were now slightly parted and into
the room filtered the grave, languorous accents of the new tone-poem.
Her eyes were fixed by Rentgen's. His expression changed; with nostrils
dilated like a hunter scenting prey, his rather inert, cold features
became transfigured; he was the man who listened, the cruel judge who
sentenced. And she hoped, also the kind friend who would consider the
youth and inexperience of the culprit. To the morbidly acute hearing of
the woman, the music had a ring of hollow sonority after the denser
packed phrases of Weber.

She had read Sordello with her husband until she thought its meaning was
as clear as high noon. By the critic's advice the subject had been
selected for musical treatment. Sordello's overweening spiritual
pride--"gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy"--appealed to Van
Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the
youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the
world thrust upon him its joys--here were motives, indeed, for any