He started. There was a pause. I felt myself blushing.
‘Let me guess at your history,’ he said. ‘You have lived much alone with your thoughts, and you have read a great deal of the finest romantic poetry, and you have been silent, especially with men. You have seen little of men.’
‘But I understand them,’ I answered boldly.
‘I believe you do,’ he admitted; and he laughed. ‘So I needn’t explain to you that a thousand women dying of love for one man will not help that man to happiness, unless he is dying of love for the thousand and first.’
‘And have you never loved?’
The words came of themselves out of my mouth.
‘I have deceived myself—in my quest of sympathy,’ he said.
‘Can you be sure that, in your quest of sympathy, you are not deceiving yourself tonight?’
‘Yes,’ he cried quickly, ‘I can.’ And he sprang up and almost ran to the piano. ‘You remember the D flat Prelude?’ he said, breaking into the latter part of the air, and looking at me the while. ‘When I came to that note and caught your gaze’—he struck the B flat and held it—‘I knew that I had found sympathy. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! Do you remember?’
‘Remember what?’