“Ah, you have committed an inanity,” she said. “I was so afraid you were a person who never said anything stupid. But to pay compliments is stupid. And now I have been rude. That is even more stupid.”
“I think it is,” said he, “because it is also unnecessary.”
There was a further challenge in this, but she did not take the glove he had flung, and having reached the tree at the end of the lawn underneath which, three days ago, the ill-fated “Mill on the Floss” had lain, they turned back again towards the house, and she directed their talk, like their steps, in another direction.
“It is good of you,—I mean about Martin,” she said. “That is just what he wants, to go among people who will take him and his music seriously, not gasp just because he plays extremely fast. No one here really knows the difference between Rule Britannia and the Dead March. And yesterday—oh dear! oh dear!” And she broke out laughing.
“There isn’t much,” observed Frank, parenthetically. “But please tell me about yesterday.”
“I think I must, because, though you will laugh, you will laugh kindly. It was at the early service, and the dear boy played the overture to ‘Lohengrin’ as a voluntary, and my father thought it wasn’t quite suitable.”
He considered this a moment.
“Do you know, I don’t think I want to laugh at all?” he said. “I understand perfectly.”
“But Martin didn’t. That was so funny.”
“No, he wouldn’t. That is one of the penalties of genius. In fact, it is what genius means. It is having one point of view so vivid that all others are dark, invisible beside it. And genius is always intolerant.”