“I think it would be interesting to know what people imagine when they listen to music,” went on Helen.  “I have all sorts of queer fancies for myself; whenever it gets too exciting there is always one last resource, you can fly away to the top of the nearest mountain.  I don’t know just why that is, but perhaps it’s because you can see so much from there, or because there are so many winds; anyway, there is a dance—­a wonderfully thrilling thing, if only the composer knows how to manage it.  There is someone who dances with me—­I never saw his face, but he’s always there; and everything around you is flying fast, and there comes surge after surge of the music and sweeps you on,—­perhaps some of those wild runs on the violins that are just as if the wind took you up in its arms and whirled you away in the air!  That is a most tremendous experience when it happens, because then you go quite beside yourself and you see that all the world is alive and full of power; the great things of the forest begin to stir too, the trees and the strange shapes in the clouds, and all the world is suddenly gone mad with motion; and so by the time you come to the last chords your hands are clenched and you can hardly breathe, and you feel that all your soul is throbbing!”

Helen was getting quite excited then, just over her own enthusiasm; perhaps it was because the wind was blowing about her.  “Is that the way music does with you?” she laughed, as she stopped.

“Sometimes,” said Mr. Howard, smiling in turn; “but then again while all my soul is throbbing I feel my neighbor reaching to put on her wraps, and that brings me down from the mountains so quickly that it is painful; afterwards you go outside among the cabs and cable-cars, and make sad discoveries about life.”

“You are a pessimist,” said the girl.

“Possibly,” responded the other, “but try to keep your fountain of joy a while, Miss Davis.  There are disagreeable things in life to be done, and some suffering to be borne, and sometimes the fountain dries up very quickly indeed.”

Helen was much more ready to look serious than she would have been a month before; she asked in a different tone, “You think that must always happen?”

“Not quite always,” was the reply; “there are a few who manage to keep it, but it means a great deal of effort.  Perhaps you never took your own happiness so seriously,” he added with a smile.

“No,” said Helen, “I never made much effort that I know of.”

“Some day perhaps you will have to,” replied the other, “and then you will think of the creatures of nature as I do, not simply as rejoicing, but as fighting the same battle and daring the same pain as you.”

The girl thought for a moment, and then asked:  “Do you really believe that as a fact?”

“I believe something,” was the answer, “that makes me think when I go among men and see their dullness, that Nature is flinging wide her glory in helpless appeal to them; and that it is a dreadful accident that they have no eyes and she no voice.”  He paused for a moment and then added, smiling, “It would take metaphysics to explain that; and meanwhile we were talking about your precious fountain of joy.”