“It is,” I answered earnestly.  “I believe few are so perfectly happy in music as I am.”

Mrs. Everard looked thoughtful.

“No amount of practice could make me play like that,” she said; “yet I have had two or three masters who were supposed to be first-rate.  One of them was a German, who used to clutch his hair like a walking tragedian whenever I played a wrong note.  I believe he got up his reputation entirely by that clutch, for he often played wrong notes himself without minding it.  But just because he worked himself into a sort of frenzy when others went wrong, everybody praised him, and said he had such an ear and was so sensitive that he must be a great musician.  He worried me nearly to death over Bach’s ’Well-tempered Klavier’—­all to no purpose, for I can’t play a note of it now, and shouldn’t care to if I could.  I consider Bach a dreadful old bore, though I know it is heresy to say so.  Even Beethoven is occasionally prosy, only no one will be courageous enough to admit it.  People would rather go to sleep over classical music than confess they don’t like it.”

“Schubert would have been a grander master than Beethoven, if he had only lived long enough,” said Zara; “but I dare say very few will agree with me in such an assertion.  Unfortunately most of my opinions differ from those of everyone else.”

“You should say fortunately, madame,” said Colonel Everard, bowing gallantly; “as the circumstance has the happy result of making you perfectly original as well as perfectly charming.”

Zara received this compliment with her usual sweet equanimity, and we rose to take our leave.  As we were passing out, Amy Everard drew me back and crammed into the pocket of my cloak a newspaper.

“Read it when you are alone,” she whispered; “and you will see what Raffaello Cellini has done with the sketch he made of you.”

We parted from these pleasant Americans with cordial expressions of goodwill, Zara reminding them of their engagement to visit her at her own home next day, and fixing the dinner-hour for half-past seven.

On our return to the Hotel Mars, we found Heliobas in the drawing-room, deep in converse with a Catholic priest—­a fine-looking man of venerable and noble features.  Zara addressed him as “Father Paul,” and bent humbly before him to receive his blessing, which he gave her with almost parental tenderness.  He seemed, from his familiar manner with them, to be a very old friend of the family.

On my being introduced to him, he greeted me with gentle courtesy, and gave me also his simple unaffected benediction.  We all partook of a light luncheon to-gether, after which repast Heliobas and Father Paul withdrew together.  Zara looked after their retreating figures with a sort of meditative pathos in her large eyes; and then she told me she had something to finish in her studio—­would I excuse her for about an hour?  I readily consented, for I myself was desirous of passing a little time in solitude, in order to read the manuscripts Heliobas had given me.  “For,” thought I, “if there is anything in them not quite clear to me, he will explain it, and I had better take advantage of his instruction while I can.”