"Isaacson!"
"Yes?"
He turned a little in his seat.
"Grand music! But it's all wrong."
"Why?"
"Wrong in its lesson."
The artist in Isaacson could not conceal a shudder.
"I don't look for a lesson; I don't want a lesson in it."
"But the composer forces it on one--a lesson of despair. Give it all up! No use to make your effort. The Immanent Will broods over you. You must go down in the end. That music is a great lie. It's splendid, it's superb, but it's a lie."
"Shall we go out? We've got ten minutes."
They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down, passing and repassing others who were discussing the music.
"Such music puts my back up," Nigel continued, with energy; "makes me feel I won't give in to it."
Isaacson could not help smiling.
"I can't look at Art from the moral plane."
"But surely Art often makes you think either morally or immorally. Surely it gives you impulses which connect themselves with life, with people."
Isaacson looked at him.
"I don't deny it. But these impulses are like the shadowy spectres of the Brocken, mere outlines which presently, very soon, dissolve into the darkness. Though great music is full of form, it often creates chaos in those who hear it."
"Then that music should call up in you a chaos of despair."
"It does."
"It makes me want to fight."
"What?"
"All the evil and the sorrow of the world. I hate despair."
Isaacson glanced at him again, and noticed how strong he was looking, and how joyous.
"Scotland has done you good," he said. "You look splendid to-night."
Secretly he gave a special meaning to the ordinary expression. To-night there was a splendour in his friend which seemed to be created by an inner strength radiating outward, informing, and expressing itself in his figure and his features.
"I'm looking forward to the winter."
Isaacson thought of the note of triumph in Mrs. Chepstow's voice when she said to him, "I don't feel such things this summer." Surely Nigel now echoed that note.
An electric bell sounded. They returned to the concert-room.
They stayed till the concert was over, and then walked away down Regent Street, which was moist and dreary, full of mist and of ugly noises.
"When do you start for Egypt?" said Meyer Isaacson.
"In about ten days, I think. Do you wish you were going there?"
"I cannot possibly escape."
"But do you wish to?"
For a moment Isaacson did not answer.
"I do and I don't," he said, after the pause. "Work holds one strangely, because, if one is worth anything as a worker, its grip is on the soul. Part of me wants to escape, often wants to escape."