‘But have you no friends?’ I ventured.

‘Who can tell?’ he replied.  ‘If I have, I scarcely ever see them.’

‘And no home?’

’I have a home on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and I loathe it.’

‘Why do you loathe it?’

‘Ah!  For what it has witnessed—­for what it has witnessed.’  He sighed.  ‘Suppose we discuss something else.’

You must remember my youth, my inexperience, my lack of adroitness in social intercourse.  I talked quietly and slowly, like my aunt, and I know that I had a tremendous air of sagacity and self-possession; but beneath that my brain and heart were whirling, bewildered in a delicious, dazzling haze of novel sensations.  It was not I who spoke, but a new being, excessively perturbed into a consciousness of new powers.  I said: 

’You say you are friendless, but I wonder how many women are dying for love of you.’

He started.  There was a pause.  I felt myself blushing.

‘Let me guess at your history,’ he said.  ’You have lived much alone with your thoughts, and you have read a great deal of the finest romantic poetry, and you have been silent, especially with men.  You have seen little of men.’

‘But I understand them,’ I answered boldly.

‘I believe you do,’ he admitted; and he laughed.  ’So I needn’t explain to you that a thousand women dying of love for one man will not help that man to happiness, unless he is dying of love for the thousand and first.’

‘And have you never loved?’

The words came of themselves out of my mouth.

‘I have deceived myself—­in my quest of sympathy,’ he said.

’Can you be sure that, in your quest of sympathy, you are not deceiving yourself tonight?’

‘Yes,’ he cried quickly, ‘I can.’  And he sprang up and almost ran to the piano.  ‘You remember the D flat Prelude?’ he said, breaking into the latter part of the air, and looking at me the while.  ’When I came to that note and caught your gaze’—­he struck the B flat and held it—­’I knew that I had found sympathy.  I knew it!  I knew it!  I knew it!  Do you remember?’

‘Remember what?’

‘The way we looked at each other.’

‘Yes,’ I breathed, ‘I remember.’

‘How can I thank you?  How can I thank you?’

He seemed to be meditating.  His simplicity, his humility, his kindliness were more than I could bear.

‘Please do not speak like that,’ I entreated him, pained.  ’You are the greatest artist in the world, and I am nobody—­nobody at all.  I do not know why I am here.  I cannot imagine what you have seen in me.  Everything is a mystery.  All I feel is that I am in your presence, and that I am not worthy to be.  No matter how long I live, I shall never experience again the joy that I have now.  But if you talk about thanking me, I must run away, because I cannot stand it—­and—­and—­you haven’t played for me, and you said you would.’