Again Karl sat and listened to the torrent of fragments and currents of interrupted thoughts. Heard for the second time it seemed to him even a more brilliantly constructed absence of construction than before, an anomalous farrago which could only have been attained by a really scholarly and studious disregard of all rules; no one who had not the rules at his finger-tips could have broken them so accurately. It was a gorgeous parody of musical grammar in exactly the mode in which Lady Sunningdale’s conversation was a brilliant parody of speech, full of disconnected wit, and lit from end to end with humour, but as jerky as the antics of a monkey, as incapable of sustained flight in any one direction as a broken-winged bird, a glorious extravagance. Karl had left his seat and stood near the piano as the bravura passage began. This time it seemed to present no difficulty to Martin, though his unerring hands were hardly more than a brown mist over the keys. And Karl felt a sudden spasm of jealousy of his pupil as a huge cascade of tenths and octaves streamed out of Martin’s fingers. “Yes, indeed, the bravura is not easy,” he remarked, when Martin had finished, “and I think you played it without a mistake, did you not? Is it _quite_ easy to play tenths like that?” Martin laughed. “I find I’ve got not to think of anything else,” he said. “Will that do for my composition for the week?” Karl laughed. “Yes, very well, indeed,” he said. “It has lots of humour,--and humour in music is rather rare. But don’t cultivate it, or some day you will find yourself in the position of a man who can’t help making puns. A dismal fate. Now, let us leave it--it is admirable--and get to work. I think I told you to study the last of the Noveletten. Play it, please.” This time, however, there was no laughter and no approbation. Karl looked rather formidable. “It won’t do,--it won’t do at all,” he said. “You have the notes, but that is absolutely all. It is perfectly empty and dead. A pianola would do as well. What’s the matter? Can’t you read anything into it?” Martin shrugged his shoulders. “I know it’s all wrong,” he said. “But I can’t make anything of it. It’s stodgy.” Karl’s eyes glared rather dangerously from behind his glasses. “Oh, stodgy, is it?” he said, slowly. “Schumann is stodgy. That is news to me. I must try to remember that.” Martin looked sideways at his master, but Karl’s face did not relax. “Stodgy!” he repeated. “I know where the stodginess comes in. Ah, you are either idiotic or you have taken no trouble about it. Because you have found that the mere execution was not difficult to you, you have not troubled to get at the music. I gave you music to learn, and you have brought me back notes. Do not bring a piece to me like that again. If I give you a thing to learn, I do so for some reason. Get up, please.”