‘You don’t know Tristan?’
He jumped up, excited.
‘How could I know it?’ I expostulated. ‘I have never seen any opera. I know the marches from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and “O Star of Eve!”’
‘But it is impossible that you don’t know Tristan!’ he exclaimed. ‘The second act of Tristan is the greatest piece of love-music—No, it isn’t.’ He laughed. ‘I must not contradict myself. But it is marvellous—marvellous! You know the story?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Play me some of it.’
‘I will play the Prelude,’ he answered.
I gulped down the remaining drops in my glass and crossed the room to a chair where I could see his face. And he played the Prelude to the most passionately voluptuous opera ever written. It was my first real introduction to Wagner, my first glimpse of that enchanted field. I was ravished, rapt away.
‘Wagner was a great artist in spite of himself,’ said Diaz, when he had finished. ‘He assigned definite and precise ideas to all those melodies. Nothing could be more futile. I shall not label them for you. But perhaps you can guess the love-motive for yourself.’
‘Yes, I can,’ I said positively. ‘It is this.’
I tried to hum the theme, but my voice refused obedience. So I came to the piano, and played the theme high up in the treble, while Diaz was still sitting on the piano-stool. I trembled even to touch the piano in his presence; but I did it.