He was conscious presently of the faint ring of a bell, followed by the murmur of voices in the hall. Someone entered the room and sat down quietly behind him. Millicent, who had paid no heed to him since mounting to the organ, was just beginning the Tannhäuser overture. She followed this with passages from Lohengrin and Parsifal and classical liturgical music touched with a haunting mystery.... She came down slowly into the room as though the spell of the music still held her. “I shan’t say anything--it might be the wrong word,” he said as he went to meet her. “But it was beautiful--very beautiful!” “You were a good listener; I felt that,” she replied. He had forgotten that there had been another listener until she smilingly waved her hand to someone behind him. “So I had two victims--and didn’t know it! Patient sufferers! Mr. Mills, you and Mr. Storrs have met--I needn’t introduce you a second time.” It was Franklin Mills, then, exercising a neighbor’s privilege, who had arrived in the middle of the recital and taken a seat by the door. “Mr. Storrs is a perfect listener,” Mills was saying as he shook hands with Bruce. “He didn’t budge all the time you were playing.” Mills’s easy, gracious manners, the intimacy implied in his chaffing tone as he complained that she played better when she didn’t know he was in the house, irritated Bruce. He had been enjoying himself so keenly, the girl’s talk had so interested him and he had been so thrilled and lifted by her music that Mills’s appearance was like a profanation. They were all seated now, and Millicent spoke of a book Mills had sent her which it happened Bruce had read, and she asked his opinion of it before expressing her own. Very likely Mills was in the habit of sending her books. She said that she hadn’t cared greatly for the book--a novel that discussed the labor question. The author evidently had no solution of his own problem and left the reader in the air as to his purpose. “Maybe he only meant to arouse interest--stir people up and leave the solution to others,” Bruce suggested. “That was the way I took it,” said Mills. “The fact is, nobody has any solution short of a complete tearing down of everything. And that,” he added with a smile and a shrug, “would be very uncomfortable.” “For us--yes,” Millicent replied quickly. “But a good many of our millions would probably welcome a chance to begin over again.” “What with,” Mills demanded, “when everything had been smashed?” “Oh, they’d be sure to save something out of the wreck!” Millicent replied. “Well,” Mills remarked, “I’m hoping the smash won’t come in my day. I’m too old to go out with a club to fight for food against the mob.” “You want us to say that you’re _not_ too old,” laughed Millicent; “but we’re not going to fall into that trap!” “But--what _is_ going to happen?” asked Bruce.