“Oh, indeed?” ironically. “Something vastly complimentary, no doubt.”
Van Zandt smiles emphatically. “I was thinking that I should like to set you to music, if I possessed the faculty,” he says, as he glances humorously at his companion’s pouting face.
“What should you write, a waltz refrain or a dancehall ditty?” asks Mrs. Harding.
“Neither; I should write a symphony, a wild sort of affair,” he smiles. “It would begin quietly and run along for bars and bars in a theme that would suggest days when the heart was young and life seemed a pathway of roses. This would give place to scherzo and the whole movement would be light and playful and singing. Then the music would begin to grow troublous, anon turbulent, and would finally burst into uncontrollable tumult. This would gradually pass away, and the third movement would be capriccio, the music now flashing fire, again singing on like a mountain brook, on and on, and on.”
“You are very discerning, Mr. Van Zandt,” says Isabel, biting her lip. “What name should you bestow on this remarkable symphony?”
“I should call it ‘Isabel.’”
“And the last movement, what would that be?”
“Oh, that would be unfinished, like Schubert’s,” Van Zandt replies, with a provoking smile.
“Fortunately. For if you design to complete it you will have to do so from memory. I am going away,” declares Isabel, with a flush in each cheek.
“Going away? Where?”