The artist laughed. "Our poor little mystery," he
said.
But the novelist--as they went toward the house--cursed Mrs. Taine, James
Rutlidge, and all their kin and kind, with a vehement earnestness that
startled his companion--familiar as the latter was with his friend's
peculiar talent in the art of vigorous expression.
After dinner, that evening, the painter and the novelist sat on the
porch--as their custom was--to watch the day go out of the sky and the
night come over valley and hill and mountain until, above the highest
peaks, the stars of God looked down upon the twinkling lights of the towns
of men. At that hour, too, it was the custom, now, for the violinist
hidden in the orange grove, to make the music they both so loved.
In the music, that night, there was a feeling that, to them, was new--a
vague, uncertain, halting undertone that was born, they felt, of fear. It
stirred them to question and to wonder. Without apparent cause or reason,
they each oddly connected the troubled tone in the music with the stopping
of the automobile from Fairlands Heights, that afternoon, at the gate of
the little house next door--the artist, because of Mrs. Taine's insistent
inquiry about the, to him, unknown musician;--Conrad Lagrange, because of
the manner of the girl in the garden when James Rutlidge appeared and
because of the critic's interest when they had spoken of the violinist in
the studio.
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