‘Not be able to go to the concert!’ I repeated mechanically.

‘No, miss.’

‘I will come downstairs.’

‘If I were you, I shouldn’t, miss.  She’s dozing a bit just now.’

‘Very well.’

I went on playing.  But Chopin, who was the chief factor in my emotional life; who had taught me nearly all I knew of grace, wit, and tenderness; who had discovered for me the beauty that lay in everything, in sensuous exaltation as well as in asceticism, in grief as well as in joy; who had shown me that each moment of life, no matter what its import, should be lived intensely and fully; who had carried me with him to the dizziest heights of which passion is capable; whose music I spiritually comprehended to a degree which I felt to be extraordinary—­Chopin had almost no significance for me as I played then the most glorious of his compositions.  His message was only a blurred sound in my ears.  And gradually I perceived, as the soldier gradually perceives who has been hit by a bullet, that I was wounded.

The shock was of such severity that at first I had scarcely noticed it.  What?  My aunt not going to the concert?  That meant that I could not go.  But it was impossible that I should not go.  I could not conceive my absence from the concert—­the concert which I had been anticipating and preparing for during many weeks.  We went out but little, Aunt Constance and I. An oratorio, an amateur operatic performance, a ballad concert in the Bursley Town Hall—­no more than that; never the Hanbridge Theatre.  And now Diaz was coming down to give a pianoforte recital in the Jubilee Hall at Hanbridge; Diaz, the darling of European capitals; Diaz, whose name in seven years had grown legendary; Diaz, the Liszt and the Rubenstein of my generation, and the greatest interpreter of Chopin since Chopin died—­Diaz!  Diaz!  No such concert had ever been announced in the Five Towns, and I was to miss it!  Our tickets had been taken, and they were not to be used!  Unthinkable!  A photograph of Diaz stood in a silver frame on the piano; I gazed at it fervently.  I said:  ’I will hear you play the Fantasia this night, if I am cut in pieces for it to-morrow!’ Diaz represented for me, then, all that I desired of men.  All my dreams of love and freedom crystallized suddenly into Diaz.

I ran downstairs to the breakfast-room.

‘You aren’t going to the concert, auntie?’ I almost sobbed.

She sat in her rocking-chair, and the gray woollen shawl thrown round her shoulders mingled with her gray hair.  Her long, handsome face was a little pale, and her dark eyes darker than usual.

‘I don’t feel well enough,’ she replied calmly.

She had not observed the tremor in my voice.

‘But what’s the matter?’ I insisted.

‘Nothing in particular, my dear.  I do not feel equal to the exertion.’

‘But, auntie—­then I can’t go, either.’

‘I’m very sorry, dear,’ she said.  ‘We will go to the next concert.’