“It isn’t the technique and all that, though of course he is the first in the world for that and everything else; it’s the sense, the heart that he puts into it.  In that adagio—­well, I played it to you once, like the cheeky little duffer I was, and felt pleased as Punch with myself, and no end cocked up because you liked it.  Hilda, I ought to have been taken out and shot for daring to touch it!  When the maestro (they call him maestro here, so you mustn’t think me Frenchified), when he played it, the world seemed just to melt away, and nothing left but a voice, that sang, and sang, and told you more than you ever dreamed of in all your life before.  I wish I could describe things, but you know I can’t, so you won’t expect it.  But one thing I will tell you, if you’ll promise not to tell any living soul—­”

“Stop, my dear!” said Mrs. Grahame, quickly.  “We must not touch upon the boy’s confidences.  Head that part to yourself.”

“Thank you, ma’am!” said Hilda.  “This mark of trust is most gratifying, I assure you.  ’Not tell any living soul except your mother, dear.’  Now how do you feel, madam?”

“Dear Jack!” said Mrs. Grahame, softly.  “Dear lad! of course I shall like to hear it.  Go on, Hilda, and I promise not to interrupt again.”

“The day after the last concert—­it was only day before yesterday, but it seems an age—­I went to take my lesson, and my master was not there.  He is often late, so I just took out some music and began to play over the things I had studied.  There was a sonata of Rubinstein’s, very splendid, that has quite possessed me lately.  I played that, and I suppose I forgot where I was and all about it, for I went on and on, never hearing a sound except just the music.  You must hear it when I come back, Hilda.  It begins in the minor, and then there is the most superb sweep up into the major; your heart seems to sweep up with it, and you find yourself in another world, where everything is divine harmony.  I’m talking nonsense, I know, but that piece just sends me off my head altogether.  Well, at last I finished it and came down from the clouds, and when I turned around, Hilda, there was the maestro himself, standing and listening.  Well! you can’t go through the floor and all that sort of thing, as they do in the fairy-books, but I did wish I was a mouse, or a flea, or anything smaller that there is.  He stood still a minute.  Perhaps he was afraid I would behave like some asses the other day—­they weren’t Americans, I am happy to say—­ who met him, and went down on their knees in the hotel entry, and took bits of mud from his shoes for a keepsake; they truly did, the horrid pigs!  And he just said ‘Dummkopfer!’ and went off and left them kneeling there.  Wasn’t that jolly?  Well, I say, he might have thought I would act like that, and yet I don’t believe he did, for he had the kindest, friendliest look on his face.  He came forward and held out his hand, and said, ’So you play the great sonata, my son; and love it, too, I perceive.’