"Would her niece be pleased to go? would Miss"—
Laura looked up from her work and hesitated.
"She was much obliged, she didn't know, but she had promised her cousin to go to the theatre with him."
Mrs. Ashton, thinking the musician looked displeased, attempted to explain.
"Laura was not very fond of music. She did not like concerts very well. She seldom came to New York, and the theatre was a new thing to her."
"I do not wonder," said Arnold, withdrawing his ticket. "I sympathize with Mademoiselle in her love for the theatre; and concert-music is but poor stuff. If one finds a glimpse there of a higher style, a higher art, it is driven away directly by the recurrence of something trifling and frivolous."
Mrs. Ashton did not agree with the musician. She could not understand why Laura did not like concerts. For herself, she liked the variety: the singing relieved the piano, and one thing helped another.
Arnold looked towards Laura for a contradiction; he wanted to hear her defence of her philosophy, for he was convinced she had some in not liking music. To him every one had expressed a fondness for music; and it was a rarity, an originality, to find some one who confessed she did not like it.
But Laura did not seem inclined to reply; she was counting the stitches in her crochet. In the silence, Arnold took his leave.
He had no sooner reached his own room than he reproached himself for his sudden retreat. Why had he not stayed, and tried to persuade the young lady to change her mind? An engagement for the theatre with a cousin might have been easily postponed. And he would like to have made her listen to some of his music. He would have compelled her to listen. He would have played something that would have stirred all the audience; but for her, it would have been like taking her back to her peril of the day before,—she should have lived over again all its self-exaltation, all its triumph.