‘But, really, I can’t play with you,’ I said weakly.
His response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder. His beautiful face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naïve and strong yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness, and such perfect kindliness, that I had no more will to resist. I knew I should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the miraculous finesse of his performance, but I resigned myself to suffering. I felt towards him as I had felt during the concert: that he must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the infinite gratitude of the entire world—in short, I raised him in my soul to a god’s throne; and I accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour he did me. And I was right—a thousand times right.
And in the same moment he was like a charming child to me: such is always in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the creature born to suffer.
‘I’ll try,’ I said; ‘but it will be appalling.’
I laughed and shook my head.
‘We shall see how appalling it will be,’ he murmured, as he got the volume of music.
He fetched a chair for me, and we sat down side by side, he on the stool and I on the chair.
‘I’m afraid my chair is too low,’ I said.
‘And I’m sure this stool is too high,’ he said. ‘Suppose we exchange.’
So we both rose to change the positions of the chair and the stool, and our garments touched and almost our faces, and at that very moment there was a loud rap at the door.