“What sort of music do you care for?” he asked me. “Or shall I just play anything?” “Yes; whatever you feel in the mood for.” His head was bent a little over the key-board, and he seemed to be thinking of what he should play. I watched a tendril of clematis that waved softly over my head, and every now and again I breathed in the sweet scent of a stalk of mignonette I had gathered in passing. My thoughts floated away through the quiet afternoon, and I began to wonder what things were like when there was no one there to be conscious of them. I know now that it was the fifteenth Prelude, but at the time I had never even heard the name of Chopin, and all I was aware of was that a soft, very delicate tune, was coming to me across the room, with a curious pallor, suggestive of the whiteness of water. I half closed my lids and lay absolutely still. Even in my ignorance I knew that the beauty of Gerald’s playing was extraordinary. It may have had many faults; he may have been incapable of doing all kinds of things that professional pianists can do; he may have been, and probably was, deficient in power: I do not know. He seemed to caress the notes rather than to strike them, he seemed literally to draw the music out, and the whole tone had a kind of liquid, singing quality, such as I have never heard since save in the playing of Pachmann. As I listened, the music gathered force and sombreness, growing louder and darker in a heavily marked crescendo, and then once more it passed into the clear soft tune with which it had begun. The sound had stopped. I said nothing; I simply waited. The cool, pleasant summer afternoon had become full of lovely voices which flickered, like waves of coloured light, across my senses. Pensively, a little shyly even, a simple, drooping melody breathed itself out on the air with a strange hesitation and indecision, rising and falling, faltering, repeating itself, resting on the “F” with a kind of desire that gathered intensity as the note swelled and died away, sinking back into “D.”