Zara kissed me.

“You are a dear girl,” she said; “I hate to appear inhospitable, but I know you are a real friend—­that you will love me as much away from you as near you, and that you have none of that vulgar curiosity which some women give way to, when what they desire to see is hidden from them.  You are not inquisitive, are you?”

I laughed.

“The affairs of other people have never appeared so interesting to me that I have cared to bother myself about them,” I replied.  “Blue-Beard’s Chamber would never have been unlocked had I been that worthy man’s wife.”

“What a fine moral lesson the old fairy-tale teaches!” said Zara.  “I always think those wives of Blue-Beard deserved their fate for not being able to obey him in his one request.  But in regard to your pursuits, dear, while I am at work in my studio, you can use the grand piano in the drawing-room when you please, as well as the little one in your own room; and you can improvise on the chapel organ as much as you like.”

I was delighted at this idea, and thanked her heartily.  She smiled thoughtfully.

“What happiness it must be for you to love music so thoroughly!” she said.  “It fills you with enthusiasm.  I used to dislike to read the biographies of musical people; they all seemed to find so much fault with one another, and grudged each other every little bit of praise wrung from the world’s cold, death-doomed lips.  It is to me pathetically absurd to see gifted persons all struggling along, and rudely elbowing each other out of the way to win—­what?  A few stilted commonplace words of approbation or fault-finding in the newspapers of the day, and a little clapping and shouting from a gathering of ordinary minded persons, who only clap and shout because it is possibly the fashion to do so.  It is really ludicrous.  If the music the musician offers to the public be really great, it will live by itself and defy praise or blame.  Because Schubert died of want and sorrow, that does not interfere with the life of his creations.  Because Wagner is voted impossible and absurd by many who think themselves good judges of musical art, that does not offer any obstacle to the steady spread of his fame, which is destined to become as universal as that of Shakespeare.  Poor Joachim, the violinist, has got a picture in his private house, in which Wagner is painted as suffering the tortures of hell; can anything be more absurd, when we consider how soon the learned fiddler, who has occupied his life in playing other people’s compositions, will be a handful of forgotten dust, while multitudes yet to come will shout their admiration of ‘Tristran’ and ‘Parsifal.’  Yes, as I said, I never cared for musical people much, till I met a friend of my brother’s—­a man whose inner life was an exquisite harmony.”

“I know!” I interrupted her.  “He wrote the ’Letters of a Dead Musician.’”