‘A bit.’
He smiled with candid joy.
‘While I was listening—’ I began.
‘Oh!’ he broke in impulsively, violently, ‘it isn’t you that have to listen. It’s I that have to listen. It’s the player that has to listen. He’s got to do more than listen. He’s got to be in the piano with his inmost heart. If he isn’t on the full stretch of analysis the whole blessed time, he might just as well be turning the handle of a barrel-organ.’
He always talked about his work during the little ‘recess’ which he took in the middle of the morning. He pretended to be talking to me, but it was to himself that he talked. He was impatient if I spoke.
‘I shall be greater than ever,’ he proceeded, after a moment. And his attitude towards himself was so disengaged, so apart and aloof, so critically appreciative, that it was impossible to accuse him of egoism. He was, perhaps, as amazed at his own transcendent gift as any other person could be, and he was incapable of hiding his sensations. ‘Yes,’ he repeated; ‘I think I shall be greater than ever. You see, a Chopin player is born; you can’t make him. With Chopin it’s not a question of intellect. It’s all tone with Chopin—tone, my child, even in the most bravura passages. You’ve got to get it.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
He gazed over the tree-tops into the blue sky.
‘I may be ready in six months,’ he said.
‘I think you will,’ I concurred, with a judicial air. But I honestly deemed him to be more than ready then.