Then he went over to her, and, sitting down beside her, leaned and touched her face with his finger. The girl grew white and she felt her heart beat. At the next word, the old, tired, cold look came back, and she faced him as she had first received him. Then suddenly the laughter behind the lattice grew noisy. Anne Pickett screamed out: “Another of Margery’s dreams shattered!” Ned laughed and rang for more wine. As they came down the steps the next morning Harold said to Ned: “My boy, there are worse crimes than murdering a woman.” “Oh, let’s get a cocktail,” croaked Ned. IV VENUS OR VALKYR? Paul Godard found the ride between Nuremberg and Baireuth discomforting. The hot July breezes that blew into the first-class coupé of the train were almost breath-arresting; and Paul had left Stuttgart that morning in a savage mood. The slowness of the railway service irritated him, the faces of his travelling companions irritated him, and he had shocked an Englishman by remarking early in the afternoon: “If the old engine doesn’t run any faster than this we had better get out and walk, or--push.” The other simply peered at the speaker and then resumed Wolzogen’s book on Leading-Motives. Three Roumanian ladies laughed in oily Eastern accents. They understood English, and the sight of a human being, a strong young man, in a passion about such a little matter as European railroad punctuality struck them as ridiculous. So they laughed again and Paul finally joined in, for he was an American. He had been rude, but he couldn’t help it; besides, it looked as if they would reach Baireuth too late for the opening performance, and his was the laughter of despair. The youthful pilgrim journeying to Baireuth was born in New York. He had studied music like most young people in his country, and had begun with that camel, that musical beast of all burdens, the piano. This he practised most assiduously at intervals, because he really loved music; but college, lawn-tennis, golfing, dancing, and motor-boating had claims not easily put aside. Naturally, the piano suffered until Paul left college; then for want of something better to do he took lessons from Joseffy and edified that master by his spurts of industry. His club began to encroach on his attention, and again the piano was forgotten. Paul, whose parents were rich, was not a society butterfly, but his training, instincts, and associations forced him to regard a good dinner, a good tailor, and a racing motor-car as necessary to his existence. From his mother he inherited his love of music, and his father, dead many years, had bequeathed him a library; better still, a taste for reading. An average cultivated American, intensely self-conscious, too self-conscious to show himself at his best, ashamed of his finer emotions, like most of his countrymen, and a trifle spoiled and shallow.