“I believe in your possibilities,” said Karl. “I believe you can be,--well, a musician. Now, as regards another point. I have been asked whether I will take you as a pupil. On my part I ask you to come to me. I have not taught for some years, but I rather suspect that one’s power of teaching increases not by teaching, but by learning. So I may be perhaps of some use. There are certain things I can tell you. Come and learn them. On the whole, it is worth your while. Even for a poet the alphabet is necessary.” Martin could not speak for a moment. “Some day I will try to thank you,” he said at length. “But not by words. I don’t think you want that, and also it would be idle for me to do it.” He paused again. “But at present, you know, I am not even certain that I shall be allowed to study. I--I am very stupid, you know. I can’t pass examinations, and my father is most awfully keen about them. In any case I expect I shall have to finish my time at Cambridge.” Rusoff rose. Absurd and almost criminal as this seemed to him, he had no right whatever to express that to Martin. “Ah, then, go back to Cambridge, like a good boy, and do whatever has to be done. Forget also almost everything that has occurred to-night. You have won a great deal of applause. Well, that is very easy to win, and in itself it is worth absolutely nothing. In so far as it encourages you to good work, whether it is now in the immediate future at Cambridge or eventually in music, there is no harm in it; but the moment it breeds in you any slackness, or the feeling ‘this will do for them,’ it is a poison, an insidious narcotic poison.” He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It is not by applause,” he said, “it is not by any help really that I or any one else can give you that you may become great. It is in yourself alone that the power lies, and it is by your life, by your industry, and by the fulness and completeness of your experience and your sympathy that you will be able to get hold of that power. For your warning, I tell you that it is no easy task--that, mining in yourself, you will have to think and struggle and despair before you can bring your own gold to the surface. You will also have to find your choice by patient, unremitting work. You cannot make others feel unless you feel yourself, and you have to learn how to feel. It is not so easy. Again, having learned that, you cannot convey what you feel until you have learned speech. And, for your encouragement, I believe--or else I would not accept you, much less ask you to be my pupil--I believe that you will be able to do so. You have perception. You can interpret others, as I have heard to-night. So that some day you may write that which will give tears or laughter to those not yet born. Good-night.” * * * * *