Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/112

 the part of Van Zandt. But Isabel—she began by admiring and finished by worshiping.

He never asked who or what she was, although she was obviously a woman with a story to tell. She was a widow, she said. Widows are many in Bohemia.

"Some day I will give you my history," she told him. But Van Zandt only laughed and asked, "Shall we go to the play to-night?"

"He cares no more for me than for the glass he is holding," Mrs. Harding now thinks, as she watches his face, turned again toward the orchestra. "Don't you ever think of anything except music?" she demands, a little impatiently.

"Oh, yes; of a great many other things. For instance, I was this minute thinking of you."

"Oh, indeed?" ironically. "Something vastly complimentary, no doubt."

Van Zandt smiles emphatically. "I was thinking that I should like to set you to music, if I possessed the faculty," he says, as he glances humorously at his companion's pouting face.

"What should you write, a waltz refrain or a dance-*hall ditty?" asks Mrs. Harding.

"Neither; I should write a symphony, a wild sort of affair," he smiles. "It would begin quietly and run along for bars and bars in a theme that would suggest days when the heart was young and life seemed a pathway of roses. This would give place to scherzo and the whole movement would be light and playful and singing. Then the music would begin to grow troublous, anon turbulent, and would finally burst into uncontrollable tumult. This would gradually pass away, and the third movement would be capriccio, the music now flashing fire, again singing on like a mountain brook, on and on, and on."

"You are very discerning, Mr. Van Zandt," says Isabel, biting her lip. "What name should you bestow on this remarkable symphony?"

"I should call it 'Isabel.'"

"And the last movement, what would that be?"