“Only one,—when there are such worlds of songs? Nothing will do me but a symphony played out there in the corn-field,—hidden away so you couldn’t see the fiddles or the kettle-drum man.”
“That’s a large order. I should be content with less,—or more!”
“The one song,—what would you command?”
“It’s the only song that ever meant a great deal to me.”
“Oh, I know! One of Herr Schmidt’s from his great operatic triumph of last winter. Your taste is only fair, then.”
“It goes back a little farther than that. It’s Träume,—Tristan and Isolde, wasn’t it? Do you remember?”
“I have heard it sung, beautifully, in Berlin,” she said evasively.
“I never did. But I heard you sing it once, and it has haunted me.”
“Music sometimes has a way of doing that; but not Wagner usually. You must be one of his disciples. I wonder if I remember how that song goes.”
She ran over a few bars of it lightly.