We are studying the Bach Chaconne now.  He is showing me a different reading of it, his idea.  He is going to play it at the Philarmonie here next week.  I wish you could hear him.  He was intending to go to London this season and play with a special orchestra of picked players, but has changed his mind.  I asked him why, and he shrugged his shoulder and said his agent, who arranges these things, seemed to think he had better not.  I asked him why again—­you know my persistency—­for I can’t conceive why it should be better not for London to have such a joy and for him to give it, but he only shrugged his shoulder again, and said he always did what his agent told him to do.  “My agent knows his business, my dear Mees Chrees,” he said.  “I put my affairs in his hands, and having done so I obey him.  It saves trouble.  Obedience is a comfortable thing.”

“Then why—­” I began, remembering the things he says about kings and masters and persons in authority; but he picked up his violin and began to play a bit.  “See,” he said, “this is how—­”

And when he plays I can only stand and listen.  It is like a spell.  One stands there, and forgets. . . .

  Evening.

I’ve been reading your last darling letter again, so full of love, so full of thought for me, out in a corner of the Thiergarten this afternoon, and I see that while I’m eagerly writing and writing to you, page after page of the things I want to tell you, I forget to tell you the things you want to know.  I believe I never answer any of your questions!  It’s because I’m so all right, so comfortable as far as my body goes, that I don’t remember to say so.  I have heaps to eat, and it is very satisfying food, being German, and will make me grow sideways quite soon, I should think, for Frau Berg fills us up daily with dumplings, and I’m certain they must end by somehow showing; and I haven’t had a single cold since I’ve been here, so I’m outgrowing them at last; and I’m not sitting up late reading,—­I couldn’t if I tried, for Wanda, the general servant, who is general also in her person rather than particular—­aren’t I being funny—­comes at ten o’clock each night on her way to bed and takes away my lamp.

“Rules,” said Frau Berg briefly, when I asked if it wasn’t a little early to leave me in the dark.  “And you are not left in the dark.  Have I not provided a candle and matches for the chance infirmities of the night?”

But the candle is cheap and dim, so I don’t sit up trying to read by that.  I preserve it wholly for the infirmities.