The fact that she understood so little depressed her with increasing frequency. It was well enough to be ignorant as a girl, or even as a young woman newly married; but she had left all that behind; she had lost her youth without any compensating gain of knowledge. Linda could not assure herself that life was clearer than it had been to her serious childhood. It had always been easily measured on the surface; she had had a very complete grasp of its material aspects almost at once, accomplishing exactly what she had planned. Perhaps this was all; and her trouble an evidence of weakness--the indecision, she saw with contempt, that kept so many people in a constant agitation of disappointment. Perhaps this was enough; more than the majority had or accomplished. She made, again, a resolute effort to be contented, at rest. Her straying fingers clumsily wrought a fragmentary refrain that mocked her determination. It wasn't new, this--this dissatisfaction; but it had grown sharper. As she was older her restlessness increased at the realization that life, opportunity, were slipping from her. Soon she would be forty. The conviction seized her that most lives reflected hers in that their questioning was never answered. The fortunate, then, were the incurious and the hearts undisturbed by a maddening thrill. She said aloud, “The ones who never heard music.” Pleydon was without a sign that she had spoken. Her emotions were very delicate, very fragile, and enormously difficult to perceive. They were like plants in stony ground. Where had she heard that--out of the Bible? Then she thought of her failure to get anything from religion--a part of her inability to drink at the springs which others declared so refreshing. Linda pressed her hands more sharply on the keys and the answering discord had the effect of waking her to reality. Pleydon remained until the following afternoon, and then was lost--in the foundry casting his statue--for six months. Arnaud went over to view the completion of the bronze and returned filled with enthusiasm. “Its simplicity is the surprising part,” he told her. “The barest statement possible. But Pleydon himself is in a disturbing condition; I can't decide if it is mental or physical. The fever of course; yet that doesn't account for his distance from ordinary living. The truth is, I suppose, that men weren't designed for great arts, and nature, like the jealous God of the Hebrews, retaliates. It is absurd, but Pleydon reminds me of you; you're totally different. I suppose it's because of the detachment you have in common.” He veered to a detail of Lowrie's first year at a university, and exhibited, against a decent endeavor to the contrary, his boundless pride in their son.