"Oh, Mr. Keith! You would go to a professor. I fear you are not very musical. Have you never felt inclined to cry?"
"I have. But not in a concert-room."
"Nor yet in a theatre?"
"Never," he replied, "though it saddens me a little to see grown-up men and women stalking about in funny dressing-gowns and pretending to be kings and queens. When I watch HAMLET or OTHELLO, I say to myself: 'This stuff is nicely riveted together. But, in the first place, the story is not true. And secondly, it is no affair of mine. Why cry about it?'"
"That looks as if you were heartless and unimaginative. And you so compassionate! I do not understand you. I do not understand myself either. We are always groping about in the dark, are we not? We are always puzzling about our own problems instead of helping other people with theirs. Perhaps one should not think so much of oneself, though it is an interesting subject. Tell me, if music says nothing to you, why not leave it alone?"
"Because I want to be able to extract pleasure from it, as you do. That is what makes me curious. I like to understand things, because then I can begin to enjoy them. I think knowledge should intensify our pleasures. That is its aim and object, so far as I am concerned. What are other joys—those of the illiterate and incurious? A dog scratching his fleas in the sunshine. They too are not wholly to be despised—"
"What a dreadful simile!"
"A precise one."
"You like to be precise?"
"It is my mother's fault. She brought me up so carefully."