“What?” I asked.
“Does this thing play?”
I roused myself from my preoccupation.
“Like a musical gorilla with fingers all of one length. And a sort of soul.... It’s all the world of music to me.”
“What do you play?”
“Beethoven, when I want to clear up my head while I’m working. He is—how one would always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those others, but Beethoven. Beethoven mainly. Yes.”
Silence again between us. She spoke with an effort.
“Play me something.” She turned from me and explored the rack of music rolls, became interested and took a piece, the first part of the Kreutzer Sonata, hesitated. “No,” she said, “that!”
She gave me Brahms’ Second Concerto, Op. 58, and curled up on the sofa watching me as I set myself slowly to play....
“I say,” he said when I had done, “that’s fine. I didn’t know those things could play like that. I’m all astir...”