"Now do sit down and talk to me!" she said, placing a chair for him and almost pushing him into it. He looked rather perplexed.
"I thought," he began.
"You surely didn't expect me to take a lesson to-day, did you?" she said, and then she went on: "Oh dear me, no; not to-day! To-morrow. Besides, my music room is upstairs; this is not my part of the house at all. How about the little boy? When does he begin? Do you think he has talent?"
Von Barwig looked bewildered. He had not only forgotten the appointment he had made with the boy to hear him play, but he had forgotten his very existence.
"I—it is not settled," he faltered. "To-morrow perhaps. Yes, to-morrow, he will call and then I will let you know."
"Oh, I thought you were to hear him to-day! I was rather anxious to know what you thought."
Von Barwig felt quite guilty.
"Do you know I've been thinking of you quite a great deal," she said.
"You are too kind," he replied in a low voice.
Miss Stanton was evidently in a very communicative frame of mind, for from that moment she talked rapidly on current musical topics. She knew the latest operas, and loved the spirit of unrest, the unsettled minor chords of the new school of music; preferred the leit motif to the aria, music drama to opera, and was altogether exceedingly modern in her tastes. She did not like recitative in music, and preferred Wagner and Tschaikowsky to Bach and Verdi. She loved to be stirred up, she said. She liked Beethoven, yes, but he was too mathematical. As for Handel, he was uninteresting in the extreme; and so she went on and on.