From now on, he came on Mondays as well as Wednesdays, and gave little Hanno lessons, while Gerda sat beside them. He went at it in an unusual way, for he felt that he owed more to his pupil’s dumb and passionate zeal than merely to employ it in playing the piano a little. The first elementary difficulties were hardly got over when he began to theorize, in a simple way, with graphic illustrations, and to give his pupil the foundations of the theory of harmony. And Hanno understood. For it was all only a confirmation of what he had always known. As far as possible, Herr Pfühl took into consideration the eager ambition of the child. He spent much thought upon the problem, how best to lighten the material load that weighed down the wings of his fancy. He did not demand too much finger dexterity or practice of scales. What he had in mind, and soon achieved, was a clear and lively grasp of the key-system on Hanno’s part, an inward, comprehensive understanding of its relationships, out of which would come, at no distant day, the quick eye for possible combinations, the intuitive mastery over the piano, which would lead to improvisation and composition. He appreciated with a touching delicacy of feeling the spiritual needs of this young pupil, who had already heard so much, and directed it toward the acquisition of a serious style. He would not disillusionize the deep solemnity of his mood by making him practise commonplaces. He gave him chorals to play, and pointed out the laws controlling the development of one chord into another. Gerda, sitting with her embroidery or her book, just beyond the portières, followed the course of the lessons. “You outstrip all my expectations,” she told Herr Pfühl, later on. “But are you not going too fast? Aren’t you getting too far ahead? Your method seems to me eminently creative--he has already begun to try to improvise a little. But if the method is beyond him, if he hasn’t enough gift, he will learn absolutely nothing.” “He has enough gift,” Herr Pfühl said, and nodded. “Sometimes I look into his eyes, and see so much lying there--but he holds his mouth tight shut. In later life, when his mouth will probably be shut even tighter, he must have some kind of outlet--a way of speaking--” She looked at him--at this square-built musician with the red-brown hair, the pouches under the eyes, the bushy moustaches, and the inordinate Adam’s apple--and then she put out her hand and said: “Thank you, Pfühl. You mean well by him. And who knows, yet, how much you are doing for him?”