It's a month yet before the delegates get together; either Warrington
will run or he won't. Calling him a meddler is good. If the Times
isn't a meddler, I never saw one and have misunderstood the meaning of
the word."
In the music-room Patty was playing Grieg and MacDowell, and
Warrington was turning the pages. The chords, weird and melancholy,
seemed to permeate his whole being; sad, haunting music, that spoke of
toil, tears, death and division, failure and defeat, hapless love and
loveless happiness. After a polonaise, Patty stopped.
"If music were only lasting, like a painting, a statue, a book," she
said; "but it isn't. Why these things haunt me every day, but I can
recollect nothing; I have to come back to the piano. It is elusive."
"And the most powerful of all the arts that arouse the emotions. Hang
it! when I hear a great singer, a great violinist, half the time I
find an invisible hand clutching me by the throat ... Patty, honestly
now, didn't you write that letter?"
"Yes," looking him courageously in the eyes. "And I hope you were not
laughing when you said all those kind things about it.
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