Harmony was now a woman.

Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and conventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerable argument.

On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took place--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing. Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had been practicing, and at the end she played a little winter song by some modern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; it was as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought of green things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring.

Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was rather ashamed of her thought.

"It seems that way to me," she finished apologetically. "It sounds rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composes certain things."

"And this gentleman who writes of winter?"

"I think he is very reserved. And that he has never loved any one."

"Indeed!"

"When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it, exactly as in books--the difference between a love story and--and--"