Isaacson was a little late in keeping this engagement.  He came in quickly and softly between two movements of Tschaikowsky’s “Pathetic Symphony,” found Nigel in his stall, and, with a word, sat down beside him.  The conductor raised his baton.  The next movement began.

In the music there was a throbbing like the throbbing of a heart, that persisted and persisted with a beautiful yet terrible monotony.  Often Isaacson had listened to this symphony, been overwhelmed by the two effects of this monotony, an effect of loveliness and an effect of terror that were inextricably combined.  To-night, either because he was very tired or for some other reason, the mystery of the sadness of this music, which floats through all its triumph, appealed to him more than usual, and in a strangely poignant way.  The monotonous pulsation was like the pulse of life, that life in which he and the man beside him were for a time involved, from which presently they would be released, whether with or against their wills.  The pulse of life!  Suddenly from the general his mind passed to the particular.  He thought of a woman’s pulse, strong, regular, inexorable.  He seemed to feel it beneath his fingers, the pulse of Mrs. Chepstow.  And he knew that he had thought of her because Nigel Armine was thinking of her, that he connected her with this music because Nigel was doing the same.  This secretly irritated Isaacson.  He strove to detach his mind from this thought of Mrs. Chepstow.  But his effort was in vain.  Her pulse was beneath his fingers, and with every stroke of it he felt more keenly the mystery and cruelty of life.  When the movement was finished, he did not speak a word.  Nor did he look at Nigel.  Even when the last note of the symphony seemed to fade and fall downwards into an abyss of misery and blackness, he did not speak or move.  He felt crushed and overwhelmed, like one beaten and bruised.

“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.”