There were many conversations such as this between Arthur and Vickars in this wonderful summer month. Life and love, like twin flowers on one stem, were opening, their petals simultaneously for Arthur. His mind flowered in contact with Vickars, his heart in contact with Elizabeth; for though the girl said little, her silence was eloquent of the bond of complete sympathy which existed between her father and herself. He tacitly included her in all his views of life. And it was clear that she gave him adoring discipleship--the discipleship of a young girl, long motherless, who had drawn from him all the elements of thought and will in her own character. It was a beautiful relationship, rare always, but especially rare in that conventional society which surrounded them, in which women were merely the butterfly appendages of men whose chief work in life was to provide them with the means of easy gaiety. Vickars did not press his opinions upon Arthur; he was much too wise and gentle to play the pedant. If Arthur learned much from him, it was by indirection; knowledge came to him unconsciously, as an atmosphere to be breathed, rather than as a lesson to be mastered. Vickars had a curious knack of evading controversy. He would flash a winged sentence on the air, satisfied that it would find its mark; and then dismiss the subject with a laugh, or with the usual comment, "But we are growing too serious; let us have some music." Then Elizabeth would open the piano, and find her way to some solemn theme of Beethoven or Tchaikowsky, and the soft, perfumed wind would blow across the room from the open window, and the divine melodies would lift the spirit into worlds of unimaginable agony or rapture. But all the time the word that had been spoken would vibrate through the music, till the music seemed its real interpretation; and thus it was endowed with new vitality and emphasis by Elizabeth's playing. "How well she understands him!" Arthur would reflect, wondering at the perfect bond of sympathy between them; and then, with a pang of yearning, "Will she ever understand me like that?"