‘But, really, I can’t play with you,’ I said weakly.

His response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder.  His beautiful face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naive and strong yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness, and such perfect kindliness, that I had no more will to resist.  I knew I should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the miraculous finesse of his performance, but I resigned myself to suffering.  I felt towards him as I had felt during the concert:  that he must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the infinite gratitude of the entire world—­in short, I raised him in my soul to a god’s throne; and I accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour he did me.  And I was right—­a thousand times right.

And in the same moment he was like a charming child to me:  such is always in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the creature born to suffer.

‘I’ll try,’ I said; ‘but it will be appalling.’

I laughed and shook my head.

‘We shall see how appalling it will be,’ he murmured, as he got the volume of music.

He fetched a chair for me, and we sat down side by side, he on the stool and I on the chair.

‘I’m afraid my chair is too low,’ I said.

‘And I’m sure this stool is too high,’ he said.  ‘Suppose we exchange.’

So we both rose to change the positions of the chair and the stool, and our garments touched and almost our faces, and at that very moment there was a loud rap at the door.

I darted away from him.

‘What’s that?’ I cried, low in a fit of terror.

‘Who’s there?’ he called quietly; but he did not stir.

We gazed at each other.

The knock was repeated, sharply and firmly.

‘Who’s there?’ Diaz demanded again.

‘Go to the door,’ I whispered.

He hesitated, and then we heard footsteps receding down the corridor.  Diaz went slowly to the door, opened it wide, slipped out into the corridor, and looked into the darkness.

‘Curious!’ he commented tranquilly.  ‘I see no one.’

He came back into the room and shut the door softly, and seemed thereby to shut us in, to enclose us against the world in a sweet domesticity of our own.  The fire was burning brightly, the glasses and the decanter on the small table spoke of cheer, the curtains were drawn, and through a half-open door behind the piano one had a hint of a mysterious other room; one could see nothing within it save a large brass knob or ball, which caught the light of the candle on the piano.

‘You were startled,’ he said.  ’You must have a little more of our cordial—­just a spoonful.’

He poured out for me an infinitesimal quantity, and the same for himself.

I sighed with relief as I drank.  My terror left me.  But the trifling incident had given me the clearest perception of what I was doing, and that did not leave me.