thing, "a woman artist who falls in love neglects everything and
merely loves. Merely loves," he repeated, looking me up and down with
great severity and disfavour.

"You'll see how I'll work," I said.

"Nonsense," he said, waving that aside impatiently. "Which is why," he
continued, "I urge you to marry quickly. Then the woman, so
unfortunately singled out by Providence to be something she is not
fitted for, having married and secured her husband, prey, victim. Or
whatever you prefer to call him--"

"I prefer to call him husband," I said.

"--if she succeeds in steering clear of detaining and delaying objects
like cradles, is cured and can go back with proper serenity to that
which alone matters. Art and the work necessary to produce it. But
she will have wasted time," he said, shaking his head. "She will most
sadly have wasted time."

In my turn I said Nonsense, and laughed with that heavenly, glorious
security one has when one has a lover.

I expect there are some people who may be as Kloster says, but we're
not like them, Bernd and I. We're not going to waste a minute. He
adores my music, and his pride in it inspires me and makes me glow with
longing to do better and better for his sake, so as to see him moved,
to see him with that dear look of happy triumph in his eyes. Why, I
feel lifted high up above any sort of difficulty or obstacle life can
try to put in my way. I'm going to work when I get to Berlin as I
never did before.

I said something like this to Kloster, who replied with great tartness
that I oughtn't to want to do anything for the sake of producing a
certain look in somebody's eyes. "That is not Art, Mees Chrees. That
is nothing that will ever be any good. You are, you see, just the
veriest woman; and here--" he almost cried--"is this gift, this
precious immortal gift, placed in such shaky small hands as yours."

"I'm very sorry," I said, feeling quite ashamed that I had it, he was
so much annoyed.

"No, no," he said, relenting a little, "do not be sorry--marry. Marry
quickly. Then there may be recovery."

And when he was saying good-bye--I tell you this because it will amuse
you--he said with a kind of angry grief that if Providence were
determined in its unaccountable freakishness to place a gift which
should be so exclusively man's in the shell or husk (I forget which he
called it, but anyhow it sounded contemptuous), of a woman, it might at
least have selected an ugly