Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/109

Rh I have occasionally known a visitor to be rude to me because he disliked another visitor's opinions—I had seen an old habitué slip away without bidding me good-night on the arrival of some confident specimen of les jeunes; but as a general thing we have it out together on the spot—the place is really a chamber of justice, a temple of reconciliation: we understand each other, if we only sit up late enough. Art protects her children, in the long run—she only asks them to trust her. She is like the Catholic Church—she guarantees paradise to the faithful. Music, moreover, is a universal solvent; though I've not an infallible ear, I've a sufficient sense of the matter for that. Ah, the wounds I've known it to heal—the bridges I've known it to build—the ghosts I've known it to lay! Though I've seen people stalk out, I've never observed them not to steal back. My studio, in short, is the theatre of a cosmopolite drama, a comedy essentially "of character."

One of the liveliest scenes of the performance was the evening, last winter, on which I became aware that one of my compatriots