CHAPTER SEVEN
I
The second evening with Trenton was very like the first except that after dinner at the Sycamore they attended a concert given by a world-famous violinist. Again as under the spell of Bob Cummings’ playing at Miss Reynolds’, Grace was caught away into a wonder-world, where she wandered like a disembodied spirit seeking some vestige of a personality that had not survived her transition to another realm. She was assailed by new and fleeting emotions, in which she studied Trenton and tried to define her attitude toward him, conscious that the time might be close at hand when some definition would be necessary. Now and then she caught a glimpse of his rapt look and saw the lines about his mouth tighten. Once he clasped his hands as though, in response to some inner prompting, he were attempting by a physical act to arrest some disturbing trend of his thoughts.
There was a fineness in his face that she had not before fully appreciated, and it was his fineness and nobility, Grace assured herself, that appealed to her. Then there were moments when she was undecided whether she loved or hated him, not knowing that this is a curious phase which women of highly sensitive natures often experience at the first consciousness of a man’s power over them. She saw man as the hunter and woman as his prey. Then with a quick revulsion she freed herself of the thought and drifted happily with the tide of harmony.
When they left the theatre Trenton asked whether she felt like walking. The night was clear and the air keen and stimulating.
“Of course; it would be a shame to ride! That music would carry me a thousand miles,” she answered.
As soon as they were free of the crowd he began to talk of music, its emotional appeal, its power to dissociate the hearer from material things.
“I never felt it so much before,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s not much poetry in me. I’m not much affected by things that I can’t reduce to a formula, and I’m a little suspicious of anything that lifts me off the earth as that fiddle did. If I exposed myself to music very often it would ruin me for business.”
“Oh, never that! I feel music tremendously; everybody must! It wakes up all manner of hopes and ambitions even if they don’t live very long. That violin really made me want to climb!”
“Yes; I can understand that. For a few minutes I was conscious myself of reaching up the ladder for a higher round. It’s dangerous to feel so keenly. I wonder if there ever comes a time when we don’t feel any more—really feel a desire to bump against the stars; when the spirit goes dead and for the rest of our days we just settle into a rut with no hope of ever pulling out? I have a dread of that. It’s ghastly to think of. Marking time! Going through the motions of being alive when you’re really dead!”