He had resented the implication at the time; to do him justice, had Silvia been penniless she would still have attracted him as no other woman ever had. It was partly her personal charm, partly her music. It may be true that the world of art is still the world, but it is a very different world from that in which most of us live and move and have our being, and Morris was conscious when her fingers touched the keys, and he took up his bow and drew it across the strings of his violin, that they entered upon a new and boundless universe in which sound superseded all other mediums of communication, and seemed to take the place of mere mundane sensation. Whether his passion for Silvia grew out of their music, or the wonder of the music was a result of the perfect accord of their natures, he could not tell. They had become one in his mind. He fervently hated her various public activities. Here again the ancestral traits dominated. He thought of her as a great lady, and being that, she should have been content without anything more. Rushing madly about doing things for other people implied a certain loss of caste. But until the previous evening his discontent had been free from the bitter draught of jealousy. There had been safety in the number of Miss Holland's admirers, and when he was surest that she did not in any way return his feeling for her, there had been balm in the thought that she was too busy elevating the condition of her own sex to have much time to waste upon any member of his. Instinctively he knew, when he intercepted the first look between the lady of his dreams and his erstwhile college associate, that the hour had come that he had dreaded. Silvia Holland had at last met a man whom, consciously or unconsciously, she acknowledged king. His rival was there, upon the threshold of her life, and he was a rival to be feared. That he might also be a rival in his profession, that he was so rich that he was far above the straits in which Morris found himself more and more frequently involved, only added to the flame that consumed him; life without Silvia herself would be dull, colorless, objectless; life without her music would be but "wind along the waste."