--would they never cease! Such an
insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found
her lips carved into a hard smile, which she saw reflected as in a trick
mirror upon the face of Elvard Rentgen. _He_ understood.

Of little avail Sordello's frantic impotencies. She saw through the
rhetorical trickeries of the music, weighed its cheap splendours,
realized the mediocrity of this second-rate poet turned symphonist.
Image after image pressed upon her brain, each more pessimistic, more
depressing than its predecessor. Alixe could have wept. Her companion
placed his hand on her arm. His fingers burned; she moved, but she felt
his will controlling her mood. With high relief she heard the music end.
There was conventional applause. Alixe restlessly peered into the
auditorium. Again she saw opera-glasses turned toward the box. "Our good
friends," she rather bitterly thought. Rentgen recognized her mental
turmoil.

"Don't worry," he said soothingly. "It will be all right to-morrow
morning. What I write will make the fortune of the composition." He did
not utter this vaingloriously, but as a man who stated simple truth. She
gazed at him, her timidity and nervousness returning in full tide.

"I know I am overwrought. I should be thankful. But--but, isn't it
deception--I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real
condition of affairs?" He took her hand.

"Spoken like a true wife," he gayly exclaimed. "My dear friend, there
will be no deception. Only encouragement, a little encouragement. As for
deceiving a composer, telling him that he may not be so wonderful as he
thinks--that's impossible. I know these star-shouldering souls, these
farmers of phantasms who exist in a world by themselves. It would be a
pity to let in the cold air of reality--anyhow Van Kuyp has some
talent."

Like lifting mists revealing the treacherous borders of a masked pool,
she felt this speech with its ironic innuendo. She flushed, her vanity
irritated. Rentgen saw her eyes contract.

"Let us go when the symphony begins," she begged, "I can't talk to any
one in my present bad humour; and to hear Beethoven would drive me
mad--now."

"I don't wonder," remarked her companion, consolingly. Alixe winced.

The silver-cold fire of an undecided moon was abroad in the sky and
rumours of spring filled the air. They parted at a fiacre. He told her
he would call the next afternoon, and she nodded an unforgiving head. It
was h