spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, she had
avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood she
responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a
medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption
in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the
soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors
of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of
speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the
lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such
times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could
scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he
cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will
profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!"

Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another
cigarette.

"They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've
done yet."

Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a
buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the
door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane
into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of
Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his
self-made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the
girl as she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at
the reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window.

"Is that the end?" she asked, at length.

"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you
think it's a good one?"

She looked at him, puzzled.

"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it down
so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to."

"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to
feel."

"It is necessary to know," she told him.

"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you
are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way.
Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a
del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New
England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan."

She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscen