"The pianist?"
"Yes."
"I have practised with him once or twice." Goswyn played the violin in moments of leisure, a weakness to which he did not like to hear allusions made.
"There! I thought so. You must bring him to me."
"Pray excuse me," the young man said, decidedly. "I will have nothing to do with introducing any artist to you. I know too well what will ensue. You will squeeze him like a lemon, and then show him the door on the pretence that he outrages your æsthetic sense,--that his manners are not to your taste. You should inform yourself on that point before making use of him. We all know that artists are not always well bred."
"Too true!" sighed Frau von Geroldstein, edging her chair nearer to the speaker.
"All artists are ill-mannered," Countess Lenzdorff maintained, with her good-humoured insolence.
"Even the greatest?" asked Erika, shyly. She was thinking of the young painter whom she had met by the monster of a bridge, and she could not decide whether to resent her grandmother's arrogance or to be ashamed of the childish admiration in which she had indulged all these years for the handsome vagabond of whom she had never heard since.
As Frau von Geroldstein was gently sighing, "Ah, yes, even the greatest," Countess Anna interposed with a laugh, "They are the worst of all. Artistic mediocrities acquire a certain drawing-room polish far sooner than do the great geniuses who live in a world of their own. And, after all, average good manners are only the dress-suit for average men: they rarely sit well upon a genius. I care very little for them: a little naïve awkwardness does not displease me at all; on the contrary, to be quite to my mind an artist must always have something of the bear about him: I take no interest whatever in those trim dandies, 'gentlemen artists,' who think more of the polish of their boots than of their art."
"Nor do I," sighed Frau von Geroldstein.