both. I like to ride like this, then to rush home and have no time for breakfast, because I am going to see the Rodin Exhibition at ten. Three-quarters of an hour there, and then a dress-maker; then lunch with Madge Heron, then a concert; then I must be at home for an hour, because I have told fifty people I shall be in; then I shall read till dinner, dine, dance, and get to bed about this time to-morrow. Let's turn and walk up under the trees. Don't you agree, Charlie?"
"Oh, I like it," he said—"Heaven knows I like it! But I haven't got a passion for it, as I think you have."
Lucia looked at him sideways a moment.
"I believe you have, too," she said, "only just now you have put a lid on it. Oh, a lid of gold, I grant you; no one knows that better than I. But a lid."
Charlie did not affect to misunderstand this.
"I'll tell Maud you called her a lid," he remarked.
"Do. Charlie, you are the luckiest man on the earth."
"That I know. About the lid. I don't agree with you. Maud has got just as much intellectual and artistic and human activity as you have; it is merely a question of tempo. But when God wrote your music, Lucia, He marked it prestissimo."
Lucia flicked off with the tassel of her riding-whip a fly that her mare was twitching its skin to get rid of.
"Probably," she said. "I maintain, however, that He marked you prestissimo also, and that Maud crossed it out and put andante con moto."
"No, she played me her own piece, and I liked the time better than that of my own. I crossed mine out."
Lucia thought over this a moment.
"I crossed Edgar's out," she said, "and substituted presto; but he got hold of it, and wrote the old direction in again: allegro ma non troppo, e ben marcato."
"Yes; he always was ben marcato," said Charlie.
"And aways will be. But I am learning that it is never the slightest use to interfere with somebody else's tempo. Everyone proceeds at the tempo to which he was set. You might as well try to alter a person's character. You can make people act as if their characters were not what they are, but the character itself cannot be altered by other people or by circumstance or life. You can squeeze it and squash it into all sorts of other shapes, like those india-rubber faces you get on crackers; you can make it wear all sorts of different expressions, but the moment
