He looked at Mrs. Ascher. I should very much have preferred talk to music. It was chiefly in order to hear Ascher talk that I had accepted the invitation.
“I know,” said Mrs. Ascher, “that Sir James likes music.”
She laid a strong emphasis on the word “know,” and I felt that she was paying me a nice compliment. What she said was true enough. I do like music, some kinds of music. I had heard for the first time the night before a song, then very popular, with a particularly attractive chorus. It began to run through my head the moment Ascher mentioned music. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it.” I liked that song. I was not sure that I should like the Aschers’ music equally well. However, I had no intention of contradicting Mrs. Ascher.
“I’m passionately fond of music,” I said.
Ascher is a singularly guileless man. I cannot imagine how any one so unsuspicious as he is can ever have succeeded as a financier, unless indeed people are far honester about money than they are about anything else. I do not think Mrs. Ascher believed that I am passionately fond of music. Her husband did. The little shadow of anxiety which had rested on his face cleared away. He became almost cheerful.
“To-night,” he said, “we are going to hear some of the work of——”
He said a name, but I utterly failed to catch it. I had never heard it before, and it sounded foreign, very foreign indeed, possibly Kurdish.
“———,” said Ascher, “is one of the new Russian composers.”
I heard the name that time, but I can make no attempt, phonetic or other, to spell it. I suppose it can be spelled, but the letters must be given values quite new to me. The alphabet I am accustomed to is incapable of representing that man’s name.
“I daresay you know him,” said Mrs. Ascher.