, in the room in which most of us
had assembled, an interesting pianist, who had given a concert the night
before at the near county town and been brought over during the day to
dine and sleep, would scarce have felt in any sensitive fibre that he
was not having his way with us. It may just possibly have been an
hallucination of my own, but while we sat together after dinner in a
dispersed circle I could have worked it out that, as a company, we were
considerably conscious of some experience, greater or smaller from one
of us to the other, that had prepared us for the player's spell.
Felicitously scattered and grouped, we might in almost any case have had
the air of looking for a message from it--of an imagination to be
flattered, nerves to be quieted, sensibilities to be soothed. The whole
scene was as composed as if there were scarce one of us but had a secret
thirst for the infinite to be quenched. And it was the infinite that,
for the hour, the distinguished foreigner poured out to us, causing it
to roll in wonderful waves of sound, almost of colour, over our
receptive attitudes and faces. Each of us, I think, now wore the
expression--or confessed at least to the suggestion--of some
indescribable thought; which might well, it was true, have been nothing
more unmentionable than the simple sense of how the posture of deference
to this noble art has always a certain personal grace to contribute. We
neglected nothing of it that could make our general effect ample, and
whether or no we were kept quiet by the piano, we were at least
admonished, to and fro, by our mutual visibility, which each of us
clearly, desired to make a success. I have little doubt, furthermore,
that to each of us was due, as the crown of our inimitable day, the
imputation of having something quite of our own to think over.

We thought, accordingly--we continued to think, and I felt that, by the
law of the occasion, there had as yet been for everyone no such
sovereign warrant for an interest in the private affairs of everyone
else. As a result of this influence all that at dinner had begun to fade
away from me came back with a rush and hovered there with a vividness. I
followed many trains and put together many pieces; but perhaps what I
most did was to render a fresh justice to the marvel of our civilised
state. The perfection of that, enjoyed as we enjoyed it, all made a
margin, a series of concentric circles of rose-colour (shimmering away
into th