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152 dachshund. Lucia meant to study her very carefully: nothing in the art of living should be overlooked. Then she recollected she had spoken absently, and turned eagerly to her neighbour again.

"I adore Strauss," she said, "if it were only for the fact that he makes Wagner sound so melodious. Then somebody will come who will make Strauss sound the sort of music that you can carry away with you. I never heard of anyone yet in whose head Strauss 'ran.' Fancy having Strauss running in your head. I must get Edgar to take me to hear Salome."

Lord Heron shook his head.

"No, go alone," he said. "It is almost always a mistake to hear music with other people, just as it is a mistake to see pictures that are new to you with other people. You want to find out first of all what you think of them, not how they strike other people. You couldn't read a book with somebody else reading over your shoulder."

"Ah, no; but because you would want to turn over before he had finished, or be afraid that he would want to turn over before you had."

"It is just the same with music or art," said he; "somebody points a thing out to you before you have really come to it, or else hasn't got to the point where you have got to. It is just like the turning over of pages."

Certain moments in her months of travel with Edgar occurred to her. It had been just as Lord Heron had said: he was often at points which she had already traversed, or to which she had not yet come. She could not help alluding, though distantly, to this.

"Ah, that is interesting and true," she said. "If two people are both genuinely interested in something, they can easily get on each other's nerves, in spite of their interest in the subject, and their—their affection for each other. You would say that was because their minds did not keep the same time."

"No minds do," he said, "in matters of art. For two people to attempt to see any new and complex work of art together, and expect to keep in harmony themselves, is a thing as impossible as it would be for two people to play a duet together if the music was written in one time for the bass and in another for the treble. As you say, they will also get on each other's nerves, and each will say that the other is not keeping time."

Again Lucia's private thoughts were reflected in her speech.