rusts of her long, white fingers.
She drew a deep breath.

"Oh," she said, "that was wonderful, wonderful. It is like a new
language--no, it is like new thoughts, too fine for language."

"I have always believed so," he answered. "Of all the arts, music, to
my notion, is the most intimate. At the other end of the scale you have
architecture, which is an expression of and an appeal to the common
multitude, a whole people, the mass. Fiction and painting, and even
poetry, are affairs of the classes, reaching the groups of the
educated. But music--ah, that is different, it is one soul speaking to
another soul. The composer meant it for you and himself. No one else
has anything to do with it. Because his soul was heavy and broken with
grief, or bursting with passion, or tortured with doubt, or searching
for some unnamed ideal, he has come to you--you of all the people in
the world--with his message, and he tells you of his yearnings and his
sadness, knowing that you will sympathise, knowing that your soul has,
like his, been acquainted with grief, or with gladness; and in the
music his soul speaks to yours, beats with it, blends with it, yes, is
even, spiritually, married to it."

And as he spoke the electrics all over the gallery flashed out in a
sudden blaze, and Curtis Jadwin entered the room, crying out:

"Are you here, Laura? By George, my girl, we pulled it off, and I've
cleaned up five--hundred--thousand--dollars."

Laura and the artist faced quickly about, blinking at the sudden glare,
and Laura put her hand over her eyes.

"Oh, I didn't mean to blind you," said her husband, as he came forward.
"But I thought it wouldn't be appropriate to tell you the good news in
the dark."

Corthell rose, and for the first time Jadwin caught sight of him.

"This is Mr. Corthell, Curtis," Laura said. "You remember him, of
course?"

"Why, certainly, certainly," declared Jadwin, shaking Corthell's hand.
"Glad to see you again. I hadn't an idea you were here." He was
excited, elated, very talkative. "I guess I came in on you abruptly,"
he observed. "They told me Mrs. Jadwin was in here, and I was full of
my good news. By the way, I do remember now. When I came to look over
my mail on the way down town this morning, I found a note from you to
my wife, saying you would call to-night. Thought it was for me, and
opened it before I found the mistake."

"I knew you had gone off with it," said Laura.

"Guess I must have mixed it