The funeral march from the Eroica began, and her father's face softened. The swelling volume of tone rose like a flood-tide. The great hall, the thousands of human hearts, all beat solemnly in the grave and hopeless pulsations of the measured chords. The air was thick with sorrow, with quiet despair. No outcries here, no screams--the modern soul advancing somberly with a pale composure to the grave of its love, aware that during all the centuries since the dead Siegfried was lifted high on the shoulders of his warriors not a word of explanation, of consolation has been found; that the modern, barren self-control means only what the barbarian yells out in his open abandonment to sorrow--and yet such beauty, such beauty in that singing thread of melody--"_durch Leiden, Freude!_" Not even the shadow of death had ever fallen across Sylvia's life, or that of her father, to explain the premonitory emotion which now drew them together like two frightened children. Sylvia felt the inexorable music beating in her own veins, and when she took her father's hand it seemed to her that its strong pulses throbbed to the same rhythm; beauty, and despair ... hope ... life ... death. At the end, "Oh, Father--oh, Father!" she said under her breath, imploringly, struggling to free herself from the muffling, enveloping sense of imminent disaster. He pressed her hand hard and smiled at her. It was his own old smile, the father-look which had been her heart's home all her life--but it was infinitely sweeter to her now than ever before. She had never felt closer to him. There was a pause during which they did not speak, and then there burst upon them the splendid tumult of "Death and Transfiguration," which, like a great wind, swept Sylvia out of herself. She could not follow the music--she had never heard of it before. She was beaten down, overwhelmed, freed, as though the transfiguration were her own, from the pitiful barriers of consciousness.... "Was the concert good?" asked Mrs. Marshall, yawning, and reaching out of bed to kiss Sylvia sleepily. She laughed a little at their faces. "Oh, music _is_ a madness! To spend a cheerful evening listening to death-music, and then come back looking like Moses before the Burning Bush!" "Say, you ought to have seen the stunt they did with their lassos," cried Judith, waking in the bed on the other side of the room, and sitting up with her black hair tousled about her face. "I'm going to try it with the pinto when we get home." "I _bet_ you'll do it, too," came from Lawrence the loyal, always sure of Judith's strength, Judith's skill. Sylvia looked at her father over their heads and smiled faintly. It was a good smile, from a full heart. "Aunt Victoria sent our dresses," said Judith, dropping back on the pillow. "That big box over there. Mine has pink ribbons, and yours are blue."