“Thanks awfully. I was hoping you would ask me to.”
Quite the most exciting occupation in the world is to read new pianoforte music for a good singer. Reynaldo Hahn is the most atmospheric of composers, the most delicate, the most decadent: not a great man, of course, but an interesting man. Like my companion’s voice, his music has no colour: it consists of whites, blacks, and innumerable shades of grey.
“You play almost as well as I sing,” she remarked, after we had gone through an entire volume of songs.
“You make me play well,” I said; “you are sympathetic. That’s a silly word—but you know what I mean.”
“But it’s really very heartless music,” said she; “it’s so sentimental, so insincere. It suits me. I can’t do the real things—not even the modern people—Hugo Wolfe, for example. The great men lacerate me so, and I don’t like being lacerated.”
“No,” said I mischievously, “you’d rather lacerate other people. Your friend from Oxford for example.”
“Ah! Lovelace, you mean. I thought you would be curious about him.”
“Well, I confess it: I am curious.”
She laughed teasingly.
“If you wait long enough, you will find out everything. But there goes the first dinner-gong, and you’re not dressed.”