"No, that is a mistake, Leonie. You know how I began my artistic career: I wanted to compose a great opera. Of course I was seventeen years old at the time and madly in love with a great singer."
Frau Oberberger's voice rang out from the table towards the corner: "I am sure it was a chorus girl."
"You are making a mistake, Katerina," answered Eissler. "Chorus girls were never my line. It was, as a matter of fact, a platonic love, like most of the great passions of my life."
"Were you so clumsy?" queried Frau Oberberger.
"I was often that as well," replied Eissler, in his sonorous voice and with dignity. "For as far as I can see I could have had as much luck as a hussar riding-master, but I don't regret having been clumsy."
Frau Ehrenberger nodded appreciatively.
"Then one would not be making a mistake, Herr Eissler," remarked Nürnberger, "if one attributed the chief part in your life to melancholy memories?"
Frau Ehrenberger nodded again. She was delighted whenever any one was witty in her drawing-room.
"Why did you say," she inquired, "that you could have had as much happiness as a hussar riding-master? It is not true for a minute that officers have any particular luck with women, even though my sister-in-law once had an affair with a First-Lieutenant...."
"I don't believe in platonic love," said Sissy, and beamed through the room.