"Not at all. My dear young man, I see a glorious future ahead of you, if you will only trouble to secure it. Come to London and study music----" "Please don't talk nonsense." "It is not nonsense. You are wonderfully gifted. I don't say you are a genius, for you are not--but you are wonderfully gifted, and your history will make you interesting to the ladies. With your talent and your history and--and your face, you ought to do really well, if only some enterprising person would take you in hand." "Which isn't likely." "I beg your pardon--it is most likely. I will do it." Nigel was more surprised than grateful. "No, thank you." "Do not be proud. It is purely a business offer. I expect to make money out of you, and--what do you call it?--credit. Listen here--if you cannot pay my fees, I will give you a year's tuition free of charge, on condition that I have a percentage on your salaries during the next five years. That is a generous offer--many a young man would give much to have me for professor." Nigel shook his head. "Thanks awfully--but I'm not keen on it." "And why?" "Well, for one thing, I don't want to make my stinking past into an advertisement, and for another I don't want to go back to prison." "Prison!--that is a strange name for fame and big salaries." "I'm not thinking of those so much as of what must come before them--all the grind and slavery. My music's the only part of me that has never been in prison, and if I make a trade and treadmill out of it, I shall be degrading it just as I have degraded everything else about me." "It will not be degradation--on the contrary." "And I don't believe I shall ever make myself a name." "That remains to be seen. I don't expect you to become world-famous, but there is no reason why you should not be exceedingly successful in England, where no one bothers very much about taste or technique. Taste you have none, technique---- Lord help us!--but temperament--ach, temperament! You have suffered--hein?" Nigel coloured. He could not answer--because he felt this man had suffered too. "Of course, you have suffered--you could not play like that if you had not. Without your suffering you would be a clever amateur--just that. But now, because you have suffered, you are something more. 'Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass'--you doubtless know our Goethe's wonderful lines. So"--and his dark, restless eyes looked up almost imploringly to the sky--"sorrow has one use in this world."