"But they might differ, or they might forget, on account of going so fast. Then they'd have to stop and ask the lady in the tower to straighten them out."
Helen looked puzzled, felt that the parable was too mixed to mean anything now, and suspected Gard of mixing it frivolously.
"The lady in the tower is too dizzy, you both run about so fast," said Mrs. Mavering. "But she thinks Helen would never run away."
"There's no chance for me to be proud in this tower," said Gard, and Helen murmured:
"It's all mixed up."
"Music, after all," said Gard, breaking a few moments' silence, "leaves you unsatisfied at your strongest. It is misty emotion. It has wings, but no feet. You seem to want something that has more grip and bite."
"That is heresy from you," said Mrs. Mavering.
"I've made a creed of heresy, you know. That Massachusetts lecturer preaches the creed, 'Every man his own issue, for conformity is death.' But I don't know whether he has said that conformity to the forms you have made yourself is as much death as conformity to those made by other men. I call myself a musician, and something keeps asking me, 'Is that all?' It seems to think it time I called myself something else."
"Then why not call yourself a still better musician?"