Helen gave a slight start. “If that is all the trouble, I need not worry,” she thought; and she added easily, “The sonata is usually considered one of Beethoven's very greatest works, Mr. Howard.”
“I am aware of that,” said the other; “but do you know how Beethoven came to compose it?”
Helen had the happy feeling of a person of moderate resources when the conversation turns to one of his specialties. “Yes,” she said; “I have read how he said 'So pocht das Schicksal auf die Pforte.' [Footnote: “So knocks Fate upon the door.”] Do you understand that, Mr. Howard?”
“Only partly,” said the other, very gently; “do you?” And Helen felt just then that she had made a very awkward blunder indeed.
“Fate is a very dreadful thing to understand, Miss Davis,” the other continued, slowly. “When one has heard the knock, he does not forget it, and even the echo of it makes him tremble.”
“I suppose then,” said Helen, glibly, trying to save herself, “that you think the sonata is too serious to be played in public?”
“Not exactly,” was the answer; “it depends upon the circumstances. There are always three persons concerned, you know. In this case, as you have pardoned me for being serious, there is in the first place the great genius with his sacred message; you know how he learned that his life work was to be ruined by deafness, and how he poured his agony and despair into his greatest symphony, and into this sonata. That is the first person, Miss Davis.”
He paused for a moment; and Helen took a deep breath, thinking that it was the strangest conversation she had ever been called upon to listen to during an evening's merriment. Yet she did not smile, for the man's deep, resonant voice fascinated her.
“And the second?” she asked.
“The second,” said Mr. Howard, turning his dark, sunken eyes full upon the girl, “is another man, not a genius, but one who has suffered, I fear, nearly as much as one; a man who is very hungry for beauty, and very impatient of insincerity, and who is accustomed to look to the great masters of art for all his help and courage.”