“‘Would you?’ I said.  ‘So would I.’

“There was paper and pens there before us, and I pulled a sheet toward me, and began to write.  ’Is this what you’d like to say to him?’ I asked her when the letter was done.  And she got pink and said:  ‘I don’t understand it, but it’s lovely.’  And she copied it out and signed her name to it, and sent it.”

Mr. Grew paused, and Ronald sat silent, with lowered eyes.

“That’s how it began; and that’s where I thought it would end.  But it didn’t, because Dolbrowski answered.  His first letter was dated January 10, 1872.  I guess you’ll find I’m correct.  Well, I went back to hear him again, and I wrote him after the performance, and he answered again.  And after that we kept it up for six months.  Your mother always copied the letters and signed them.  She seemed to think it was a kinder joke, and she was proud of his answering my letters.  But she never went back to New York to hear him, though I saved up enough to give her the treat again.  She was too lazy, and she let me go without her.  I heard him three times in New York; and in the spring he came to Wingfield and played once at the Academy.  Your mother was sick and couldn’t go; so I went alone.  After the performance I meant to get one of the directors to take me in to see him; but when the time came, I just went back home and wrote to him instead.  And the month after, before he went back to Europe, he sent your mother a last little note, and that picture hanging up there...”

Mr. Grew paused again, and both men lifted their eyes to the photograph.

“Is that all?” Ronald slowly asked.

“That’s all—­every bit of it,” said Mr. Grew.

“And my mother—­my mother never even spoke to Dolbrowski?”

“Never.  She never even saw him but that once in New York at his concert.”

“The blood crept again to Ronald’s face.  “Are you sure of that, sir?” he asked in a trembling voice.

“Sure as I am that I’m sitting here.  Why, she was too lazy to look at his letters after the first novelty wore off.  She copied the answers just to humor me—­but she always said she couldn’t understand what we wrote.”

“But how could you go on with such a correspondence?  It’s incredible!”

Mr. Grew looked at his son thoughtfully.  “I suppose it is, to you.  You’ve only had to put out your hand and get the things I was starving for—­music, and good talk, and ideas.  Those letters gave me all that.  You’ve read them, and you know that Dolbrowski was not only a great musician but a great man.  There was nothing beautiful he didn’t see, nothing fine he didn’t feel.  For six months I breathed his air, and I’ve lived on it ever since.  Do you begin to understand a little now?”

“Yes—­a little.  But why write in my mother’s name?  Why make it a sentimental correspondence?”

Mr. Grew reddened to his bald temples.  “Why, I tell you it began that way, as a kinder joke.  And when I saw that the first letter pleased and interested him, I was afraid to tell him—­I couldn’t tell him.  Do you suppose he’d gone on writing if he’d ever seen me, Ronny?”