"No, we have longer songs, too, but I don't like them so well; the short ones are better."
He struck the strings and sang:
"I long for you more
Than a starving man longs for bread,
Than a sick one longs for health,
Than a woman in travail for the baby's cry."
The strings sobbed passionately, almost brutally, as men sob with hunger, thirst, or pain. And all of a sudden came a subtle, cunning tune:
"I love truth, of flattery I scorn to think
I would rather see you than eat and drink."
"Love compared to eating and drinking," she said in surprise and she pondered. "How coarse—coarse and tender at the same time! But of course that is the very subtlest flattery."
"Why flattery?"
"Why? Ah, my dear brother, that is just what is so bitter in life, that without bread and water men die, but without love they live."
"No, they die, too," he said quietly, and was going to add something, but merely gazed at her in silence and his eyes looked sadder than ever. He blushed and hastened to change the subject.
"I must send the pleater to you: the feathers don't lie properly."