Sacrifice

lthea, craving "her beloved

uxurious hotels, celebrated landscapes, notable art collections. The governess was supplemented with the best local teachers of music and languag

of time and the expansion of her world, her impassionable nature vibrated still more extravagantly, at the mos

, pale brown creature whose carefully composed lips, whose deliber

precipitated events were clinging round her slender body like an aura: the promises of unparalleled adventures in love, perhaps also in tragedy. Before her twentieth y

stimulated her delicate tissues, she stood before an old Arab who,

d will be the death of men," he added, closing his eyes as if bored; for out there, in the mounta

e spinster drove out alone, returning at twilight with her eyelids swollen and red. She had been, s

re cool, dim, and resonant, the women's voices died away in space between the tapestried walls and the ceilings fr

edieval despots seemed curiousl

he thought of Bohemian studios at dusk, and of geniuses aquiver, like dynamos, with the powers that had taken possession of them. She envied the women whos

music that cast over Li

sonant with the tumult of great cities, repelled her. She turned instinctively toward the harmonious romanticism and idealism of a previous age. She felt that the compositions of Sc

if impelled by an inexorable force-or possibly by an idea that they must mingle their lives with the life of the stranger who could

f a concert hall, Lilla met

cores of songs, half a dozen sonatas, and a symphony. These efforts, though technically brilliant, had soon passed into oblivion. After a long while, during which nobody had heard a sound from him, Brantome had popped up in the United States to begin his critical career.

ert hall doorway; and, when he had peere

you. You don't wear the look that I discovered on your

a nervous laugh she said, "

maybe there will be other Robert Schumanns. In fact, two

n, leaving with her the thought of beauty enmeshed by death. She wondered who th