ble force--or possibly by an idea that they must
mingle their lives with the life of the stranger who could so interpret
their souls, make clear to them their secrets, and give them, at least
momentarily, a coherent glimpse of their ideals.

One afternoon, in the exit of a concert hall, Lilla met Brantome, a
critic of music.

He was a robust-looking old Frenchman with white hair and the mustaches
of a Viking, displaying a leonine countenance out of which gazed a pair
of eyes that seemed to have been made tragical by some profound
chagrin. In his youth, a student in Paris, he had written some scores
of songs, half a dozen sonatas, and a symphony. These efforts, though
technically brilliant, had soon passed into oblivion. After a long
while, during which nobody had heard a sound from him, Brantome had
popped up in the United States to begin his critical career. Now he
was courted not only in artistic circles but also in the fashionable
world, where one might sometimes see his haggard old face relentlessly
revealed beneath fine chandeliers, ironical and weary, as if crushed
beneath the combined weight of disillusionment and renown.

At sight of Lilla he stopped in the concert hall doorway; and, when he
had peered at her closely, he rumbled in her ear:

"I see that this afternoon of bad music has not fooled you. You don't
wear the look that I discovered on your face the other day, when they
had been playing Schumann."

"Oh, but Schumann!" And with a nervous laugh she said, "If I had been
Clara Wieck----"

"You would have married him just as she did, eh? Ah, well, maybe there
will be other Robert Schumanns. In fact, two years ago I found a
certain young man--but now he is dying."

He lost the smile that had come to him at this contact. With a shrug
he passed on, leaving with her the thought of beauty enmeshed by death.
She wondered who this young man was, who might have been another Robert
Schumann, but now was dying.

CHAPTER IV

Of all her suitors the most persistent was Cornelius Rysbroek.

In their childhood he had drawn for her amusement Spanish galleons, the
domes of Mogul palaces, and a fantastic damsel, that he called a
bayadere, languishing on a balcony. His thin, sallow little face bent
close to the printed page, he had read _Ivanhoe_ to her. At parties,
it was she to whom he had brought the choicest favors.

Departing to school, he had addressed her in melancholy
verses--doggerel dec