We sat down a second time to the piano.

‘You understand,’ he explained, staring absently at the double page of music, ’this is the garden scene.  When the curtain goes up it is dark in the garden, and Isolda is there with her maid Brangaena.  The king, her husband, has just gone off hunting—­you will hear the horns dying in the distance—­and Isolda is expecting her lover, Tristan.  A torch is burning in the wall of the castle, and as soon as she gives him the signal by extinguishing it he comes to her.  You will know the exact moment when they meet.  Then there is the love-scene.  Oh! when we arrive at that you will be astounded.  You will hear the very heart-beats of the lovers.  Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

We began to play.  But it was ridiculous.  I knew it would be ridiculous.  I was too dazed, and artistically too intimidated, to read the notes.  The notes danced and pranced before me.  All I could see on my page was the big black letters at the top, ‘Zweiter Aufzug.’  And furthermore, on that first page both the theme and the accompaniment were in the bass of the piano.  Diaz had scarcely anything to do.  I threw up my hands and closed my eyes.

‘I can’t,’ I whispered, ‘I can’t.  I would if I could.’

He gently took my hand.

‘My dear companion,’ he said, ‘tell me your name.’

I was surprised.  Memories of the Bible, for some inexplicable reason, flashed through my mind.

‘Magdalen,’ I replied, and my voice was so deceptively quiet and sincere that he believed it.

I could see that he was taken aback.

‘It is a holy name and a good name,’ he said, after a pause.  ’Magda, you are perfectly capable of reading this music with me, and you will read it, won’t you?  Let us begin afresh.  Leave the accompaniment with me, and play the theme only.  Further on it gets easier.’

And in another moment we were launched on that sea so strange to me.  The influence of Diaz over me was complete.  Inspired by his will, I had resolved intensely to read the music correctly and sympathetically, and lo!  I was succeeding!  He turned the page with the incredible rapidity and dexterity of which only great pianists seem to have the secret, and in conjunction with my air in the bass he was suddenly, magically, drawing out from the upper notes the sweetest and most intoxicating melody I had ever heard.  The exceeding beauty of the thing laid hold on me, and I abandoned myself to it.  I felt sure now that, at any rate, I should not disgrace myself.’

‘Unless it was Chopin,’ whispered Diaz.  ’No one could ever see two things at once as well as Wagner.’

We surged on through the second page.  Again the lightning turn of the page, and then the hunters’ horns were heard departing from the garden of love, receding, receding, until they subsided into a scarce-heard drone, out of which rose another air.  And as the sound of the horns died away, so died away all my past and all my solicitudes for the future.  I surrendered utterly and passionately to the spell of the beauty which we were opening like a long scroll.  I had ceased to suffer.