‘Satisfied?’ I asked him.

He frowned.

‘There are times when one gets rather inspired,’ he said, looking at me, as it were, without seeing me.  ’It’s as if the whole soul gets into one’s hands.  That’s what’s wanted.’

‘You had it this morning?’

‘A bit.’

He smiled with candid joy.

‘While I was listening—­’ I began.

‘Oh!’ he broke in impulsively, violently, ’it isn’t you that have to listen.  It’s I that have to listen.  It’s the player that has to listen.  He’s got to do more than listen.  He’s got to be in the piano with his inmost heart.  If he isn’t on the full stretch of analysis the whole blessed time, he might just as well be turning the handle of a barrel-organ.’

He always talked about his work during the little ‘recess’ which he took in the middle of the morning.  He pretended to be talking to me, but it was to himself that he talked.  He was impatient if I spoke.

‘I shall be greater than ever,’ he proceeded, after a moment.  And his attitude towards himself was so disengaged, so apart and aloof, so critically appreciative, that it was impossible to accuse him of egoism.  He was, perhaps, as amazed at his own transcendent gift as any other person could be, and he was incapable of hiding his sensations.  ‘Yes,’ he repeated; ’I think I shall be greater than ever.  You see, a Chopin player is born; you can’t make him.  With Chopin it’s not a question of intellect.  It’s all tone with Chopin—­tone, my child, even in the most bravura passages.  You’ve got to get it.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

He gazed over the tree-tops into the blue sky.

‘I may be ready in six months,’ he said.

‘I think you will,’ I concurred, with a judicial air.  But I honestly deemed him to be more than ready then.

Twelve months previously he had said:  ‘With six hours’ practice a day for two years I shall recover what I have lost.’

He had succeeded beyond his hopes.

‘Are you writing in that book?’ he inquired carelessly as he threw down the cigarette and turned away.

‘I have just finished something,’ I replied.

‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I’m glad you aren’t idle.  It’s so boring.’

He returned to the piano, perfectly incurious about what I did, self-absorbed as a god.  And I was alone in the garden, with the semicircle of trees behind me, and the facade of the old house and its terrace in front.  And lying on the lawn, just under the terrace, was the white end of the cigarette which he had abandoned; it breathed upwards a thin spiral of blue smoke through the morning sunshine, and then it ceased to breathe.  And the music recommenced, on a different plane, more brilliantly than before.  It was as though, till then, he had been laboriously building the bases of a tremendous triumphal arch, and that now the two wings met, dazzlingly, soaringly, in highest heaven, and the completed arch