Also they went at music. Corydon had been taught to play as many “pieces” as the average American young lady; but Thyrsis had tried to persuade her to a new and desperate emprise--he insisted that there was nothing to music until one had learned to read it at sight. So now, every day when their landlady had gone out, he moved his music-stand into the little parlor, and they went at the task. Thyrsis proposed to achieve it by a _tour_ _de_ _force_--the way to read German was to read it, and the way to read music was to read music. He would set up a piece they had never seen before, and they would begin; and he would pound out the time with his foot, and make Corydon keep up with him--even though she was only able to get one or two notes in each bar, still she must keep up with him. At first this was agony to her--she wanted to linger and get some semblance of the music; but Thyrsis would scold and exhort and shout, and pound out the time. And so, to Corydon’s own amazement, it was not many weeks before she found that she was actually reading music, that they were playing it together. In this way they learned Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas, they even adventured Beethoven’s trios, with the second violin left out. Then Thyrsis subscribed to a music-library, and would come home twice a week with an armful of new stuff, good and bad. And whenever in all their struggles with it they were able to achieve anything that really moved them as music, what a rapture it brought them! Section 7. This was indeed the nearest they could ever come to creative achievement together; this was the one field in which their abilities were equal. In all other things there were disharmonies--they came upon many reefs and shoals in these uncharted matrimonial seas. Thyrsis was swift and impatient, and had flung away all care about external things; and here was Corydon, a woman, with all a woman’s handicaps and disabilities. She was like a little field-mouse in her care of her person--she must needs scrub herself minutely every morning, and have hot water for her face every night; her hair had to be braided and her nails had to be cared for--and oh, the time it took her to get her clothes on, or even to get ready for the street! She would struggle like one possessed to accomplish it more quickly, while Thyrsis chafed and growled and agonized in the next room. There was nothing he could do meantime--for were they not going to do everything together?