“Oh, don’t talk like that,” he protested. “It was a frightful experience, but it was one I would not have missed. I had never dreamed that music could work such an effect upon me; but now I can understand the ardor with which musicians love their art; I can understand the claims they make in its behalf. It is indeed the most powerful influence that can be brought to bear upon the feelings. For my part I never was so deeply moved before—not even by Dante. But tell me, how did you acquire your wonderful skill? What must your life have been in order that you should play like that?” “Of ‘wonderful skill’ I have little enough. Tonight perhaps I played with a certain enthusiasm because I was excited. But you attribute too much to me. A musician would have descried a score of faults. My technique has deserted me; but even when I used to practice regularly, I occupied a very low grade in my profession.” “I care not how you used to play, nor how you were rated, nor how faulty your technique may be. You play now with a force that is more than human. I am not given either to flattery or to exaggeration, and I am not easily stirred up. But you have stirred me up, clear down to the marrow of my bones. Perhaps these two years of abstinence have but ripened the genius that was already in you—allowed it time to ferment. Tell me, what depths of joy and sorrow have you sounded to gather the secrets you have just revealed with your violin? What has your life been?” “My life has been a very simple one, and for the most part very prosaic.” “You might as well call the sun cold, the sea motionless, as pretend that your life has been prosaic. Friend, the only element that gives life and magnetism to art is profound, human truth That which touches us in a picture, a poem, or a symphony, is its likeness to the truth, its nature, especially its human nature. That is what makes Wilhelm Meister a powerful book, because each page is written, so to speak, in human blood. That is what makes Titian’s Assumption a great picture, because the agony in the Madonna’s face is true human agony. And that is what gave your music of a moment since the power to pierce the very innermost of my heart-because it was true music the expression of true human passion. Tell me, what manner of life have you lived, to learn so much of the deep things of human experience?” I looked into his clear, earnest eyes. They shone with a sympathy that fell as balm upon my wounds. An impulse that I could not battle with unsealed my lips. I told him my whole story from first to last. Some of the time, as I was speaking, he sat motionless with his brow buried in his hands. Some of the time he paced up and down the floor. He smoked constantly. Twice or thrice he extended his palm to bid me pause, indicating by nodding his head when he wished me to go on. Not once did he verbally interrupt, nor for a long while after I had done did he speak.