It was not beauty alone which moved such a man to worship. What would you say if you could see my own goddess of the recital, who looked bored by Schumann at the end of the second etude? It is a rather wan and sulky little face. The eyes are a darkish hazel. The nose is somewhat long and pointed and the chin too narrow to permit of that oval beauty which is so much admired by purists. Yet still my gaze returned to her as the mournful sweetness of Schumann broke out at last into the grand leaping chords of the final variation. In her plain black dress and red shoes with tall heels to increase her apparent height, one had a good idea of her figure. She has a slim and almost fragile young body, made for youthful pleasure rather than the full maturity of womanhood. How can one imagine such a body at forty or fifty? I, at any rate, fail to. So there I sat, as the divine Petrarch of the sonnets must have done on a similar occasion. Alas, I am no writer of verses. My less worthy pursuit was to find out whatever I could about the girl who had held so much of my attention for fully half an hour.

As you will guess, I had gone to the recital as one of Lady Anna's party. Does that not make my conduct the more extraordinary? I might have paid court easily enough to one of my own female companions. Did I wish for proud pale-skinned beauty at twenty-five?

How easily I could have given attention to a dozen or such a kind. Was my preference for tall graceful beauty-the oval beauty of a face framed by the veil of brown hair? A dozen more waited to be wooed at sixteen years old! It would not do. Despite all that conscience and decorum could urge, I was unable to draw my thought away from the object of my curiosity. I will tell you, my dear, how far gone I was before the Schumann variations were over. I already began to indulge in flights of fancy, assuming that I had won the heart-or at least the attention-of the sulky little minx with her pert little bun of blond hair. I imagined what I would say to her-the conversations we would hold between us-though I had never heard her voice. I pictured us together in places I am sure she has never seen and upon which her eyes would open with wonder. There we were on that terrace just below San Miniato, which overlooks all the beauty of Florence and the Arno.