ed before.
After a little, he noiselessly rearranged the cushions, and settled
himself again in a recumbent posture. It was beyond his strength to
follow that first impulse, and keep his mind abreast with what his ears
took in. He sighed and lay back, and surrendered his senses to the mere
unthinking charm of it all.

It was the Fourth Prelude that was singing in the air about him--a
simple, plaintive strain wandering at will over a surface of steady
rhythmic movement underneath, always creeping upward through mysteries
of sweetness, always sinking again in cadences of semi-tones. With only
a moment's pause, there came the Seventh Waltz--a rich, bold confusion
which yet was not confused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight upon
the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, but it left his thoughts
free.

From where he reclined, he turned his head to scrutinize, one by one,
the statues in the corners. No doubt they were beautiful--for this was a
department in which he was all humility--and one of them, the figure of
a broad-browed, stately, though thick-waisted woman, bending slightly
forward and with both arms broken off, was decently robed from the hips
downward. The others were not robed at all. Theron stared at them with
the erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and felt that he
possessed a new and disturbing conception of what female emancipation
meant in these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance rested
again upon the largest of the Virgin pictures--a full-length figure
in sweeping draperies, its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt
adoration, its feet resting on a crescent moon which shone forth in
bluish silver through festooned clouds of cherubs. The incongruity
between the unashamed statues and this serene incarnation of holy
womanhood jarred upon him for the instant. Then his mind went to the
piano.

Without a break the waltz had slowed and expanded into a passage of what
might be church music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn chant,
through which a soft, lingering song roved capriciously, forcing the
listener to wonder where it was coming out, even while it caressed and
soothed to repose.

He looked from the Madonna to Celia. Beyond the carelessly drooping
braids and coils of hair which blazed between the candles, he could see
the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble contour of her lifted chin
and full, modelled throat, all pink as the most delicate rose leaf
is