A divorced young woman, a Jewess by the name of Regina Sussmann, fell in love with him. She recognised in Daniel an elemental nature. The more he avoided her the more persistent she became. At times it made him feel good to come once again into intimate association with a woman, to hear her bright voice, her step more delicate, her breathing more ardent than that of men. But he could not trust Regina Sussmann; she seemed to know too much. There was nothing of the plant-like about her, and without that characteristic any woman appealed to him as being unformed and uncultured. One winter day she came to see him in his barren hall room in Greifswald Street. She sat down at the piano and began to improvise. At first it was all like a haze to him. Suddenly he was struck by her playing. What he heard made a half disagreeable, half painful impression on him. He seemed to be familiar with the piece. She was playing motifs from his quartette, his “Eleanore Quartette” as he had called it. It came out that Regina Sussmann had been present at the concert given in Leipzig three years ago when the quartette was performed. After a painful pause Regina began to ask some questions that cut him to the very heart. She wanted to know what relation, if any, the composition bore to actual life. She was trying to lift the veil from his unknown fate. He thrust her from him. Then he felt sorry for her: he began to speak, with some hesitation, of his symphony. There was something bewitching, enchanting in the woman’s passionate silence and sympathy. He lost himself, forgot himself, disclosed his heart. He built up the work in words before her, pictured the seven movements like seven stairs in the tower of a temple, a glorious promenade in the upper spheres, a tragic storm with tragically cheerful pauses of memory and meditation, all accompanied by laughing genii that adorned and crowned the pillars of the structure of his dreams. He went to the piano, began playing the melancholy leading motif and the two subsidiary themes, counterpointed them, ran into lofty crescendos, introduced variations, modulated and sang at the same time. The pupils of his eyes became distended until they shone behind his glasses like seas of green fire. Regina Sussmann fell on her knees by the piano. It may be that she was so affected by his playing that she could not act otherwise; and it may be that she wished thereby to give him visible proof of her respect and adoration. All of a sudden the woman became repulsive to him. The unleashed longing of her eyes filled him with disgust. Her kneeling position appealed to him as a gesture of mockery and ridicule: a memory had been desecrated. He sprang to his feet and rushed out of the room, leaving her behind and quite alone. He never said a word; he merely bit his lips in anger and left. When he came back home late that night, he was afraid he might meet her again; but she was not there. Only a letter lay on the table by the lamp.