And in a moment the thin, curious face of John Addington Symonds was peering at me round the corner.
There was nothing for it but to answer:
"No I am afraid she is still here!"
Being the most courteous of men, he smiled and took my hand; and we went up to his library together.
Symonds and I became very great friends.
After putting my sister to bed at 9.30, I climbed every night by starlight up to Am Hof, where we talked and read out loud till one and often two in the morning. I learnt more in those winter nights at Davos than I had ever learnt in my life. We read The Republic and all the Plato dialogues together; Swift, Voltaire, Browning, Walt Whitman, Edgar Poe and Symonds' own Renaissance, besides passages from every author and poet, which he would turn up feverishly to illustrate what he wanted me to understand.
I shall always think Lord Morley [Footnote: Viscount Morley of Blackburn.] the best talker I ever heard and after him I would say Symonds, Birrell and Bergson. George Meredith was too much of a prima donna and was very deaf and uninterruptable when I knew him, but he was amazingly good even then. Alfred Austin was a friend of his and had just been made Poet Laureate by Lord Salisbury, when my beloved friend Admiral Maxse took me down to the country to see Meredith for the first time. Feeling more than usually stupid, I said to him:
"Well Mr. Meredith, I wonder what your friend Alfred Austin thinks of his appointment?"
Shaking his beautiful head he replied:
"It is very hard to say what a bantam is thinking when it is crowing."