Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy to equip Terrence and
Aaron for fresh war, Graham talked with her about music for a few
vivid moments. So well did she prove herself aware of the philosophy
of music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced into voicing his own
pet theory.

"And so," he concluded, "the true psychic factor of music took nearly
three thousand years to impress itself on the Western mind. Debussy
more nearly attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity--say
of the time of Pythagoras--than any of his fore-runners--"

Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckoning over Terrence and
Aaron from their battlefield in the windowseat.

"Yes, and what of it?" Terrence was demanding, as they came up side by
side. "I defy you, Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of
Bergson on music that is more lucid than any thought he ever uttered
in his 'Philosophy of Laughter,' which is not lucid at all."

"Oh!--listen!" Paula cried, with sparkling eyes. "We have a new
prophet. Hear Mr. Graham. He's worthy of your steel, of both your
steel. He agrees with you that music is the refuge from blood and iron
and the pounding of the table. That weak souls, and sensitive souls,
and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the
world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration--"

"Atavistic!" Aaron Hancock snorted. "The cave-men, the monkey-folk,
and the ancestral bog-men of Terrence did that sort of thing--"