of them. Besides, to refrain made me feel magnanimous, and that feeling, perhaps, caused a shade of pitying[Pg 16] magnanimity to creep into my tone when we discussed the project; so Marion, who is intensely susceptible to inflections, was perfectly well aware that I was practising one of the higher virtues, as well as showing a delicate consideration for her feelings that she might well copy in regard to mine. Of course, we could do nothing but make plans during the winter; but as spring approached, without any prospect of a change that would give me regular hours of work, it seemed as if we should have to give up, for a time, the prospect of moving to the country.

[Pg 16]

It was one morning early in March that the unexpected did happen. I was at my desk reading a batch of indignant letters taking me to task for an opinion I had expressed in an article on musical culture when a summons arrived from the editor-in-chief. Up to that moment I had been amused by the denials of my assertion that the performance of a Bach fugue on the piano as part of a concert programme should be condemned as provocative of snobbish pretence; that the giving out of[Pg 17] the theme by the performer had become the signal for the audience to assume an air of intense and exalted intellectual enjoyment, though not one person in a hundred could appreciate the logical development of such a composition or distinguish anything but a confused intermingling of the parts; but the summons from the editor made me regard the matter more seriously. I hurriedly looked over the article to see if I had laid myself open to reproof for indiscretion. Yes, I had! At the very end the statement glared at me that musicians listened to a fugue with the strained intentness of jugglers watching a fellow-performer keeping three balls in the air; I had committed the fatal oversight of not saying some musicians. Probably an irate deputation representing the profession so notoriously sensitive to truthful criticism had waited upon the editor to demand a public retraction of the libel.

[Pg 17]

"Sit down, Carton," said the editor, as I entered. "You've been doing 'Music and Drama' for two years now," he said musingly, laying down his pen, "and I don't[Pg 18] think I have expressed my opinion of your work to you personally."

[Pg 18]

I shook my head mutely, afraid of what was coming next.

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