ed Viola then with fresh
passion.

Some time or other I would succeed in breaking through that charmed
circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual
maidenhood which, as it were, was hers.

I would be first and last and everything to her, and not even her art
should count beside me.

I closed my eyes and put my head back on the couch where I was sitting
and gave myself up to listening to the music.

How the instrument answered her! What a divine melody rose from it,
floating gently on the air like quivering wings.

Then suddenly came a storm of passion, and the room was filled with a
tempest of sound, while one strong thread of melody low down in the
bass ran through it all and seemed a fierce reproach of one in
anguish. At last one sheet of sound seemed to sweep the piano from end
to end, a cry of dismay, of pain, the woe and grief of one who sees
his world shattered suddenly before his eyes; then there was silence.
I sprang up and clasped her in my arms.

"Trevor," she exclaimed, like one awakening from a dream; "I had no
idea you were there."

"No," I said savagely; "you were so absorbed, you never noticed me
come in."

"Well, I heard the model go, and I waited and waited for you to come
down; but you were so long I turned to the piano to console me."

"Which it did quite well, apparently," I answered.

A sweet, tender look came over her face, and she stretched out her
arms to me.

"Nothing could wholly console me for your absence," she said; "and you
know that quite well; but the music always helps me to bear it."

I drew her to me and strained her close up to me in silence, longing
to conquer, to come into union with that mysterious inner something we
call the Soul.

Yet in this unconquerable quality, in this pursuit of that which
always escapes from our most passionate embraces, man finds an
inexhaustible delight.

CHAPTER VII

FREEDOM

The weeks slipped by, and I worked hard at the painting, while Viola
gave herself up to the music and all the work that the approaching
production of her opera gave her. Our evenings were always spent
together. We set aside two evenings in the week for our friends,
giving only small dinners of eight or ten. On the other evenings when
we were not dining out ourselves we went to the opera, and supper
after.

I often wondered whether there was anything or nothing in the fact
that we were not married to each other, which affected