"Then I will take you there. May I?"
"Yes; if you'll play once more for me first."
Though it was quite a distance to her destination, Stenak did not offer to get a taxi. He observed that as the night was pleasant, it would be nice to walk part way, to which Pat, somewhat surprised, assented. Immediately, and with no more self-consciousness than an animal, he became intimately autobiographical. He told her that he was a Russian, a philosophic anarchist, with no belief in or use for society's instituted formulas: marriage, laws, government—nothing but the eternal right of the individual to express himself to the utmost in his chosen medium of life. All his assertiveness had left him; he talked honestly and interestingly. Pat caught glimpses of a personality as simple and, in some ways, as innocent as a child's; credulous, eager, resolute, confident, trusting, and illumined with a lambent inner fire.
"I was rude to you at first," he confessed. "I am sorry. But I could not help it. I am like that."
"You shouldn't be," she chided.
"Tell me what I should be and I will be it," he declared. "You could make me anything. When you came into the room, even though I was angry, there was a flash of understanding between us. You felt it, too?"
"I felt something," admitted she. "But I was angry, myself. How silly of you to give yourself the airs of genius!"
"I have genius," he averred quietly.
Such profound conviction was in his tone that Pat was ready to believe him. As they turned to the elevated stairs he asked:
"Will you come to my studio soon for music?"