“No,” said Kloster, “he cannot.  And he cannot for the same reason that no man can go on wanting his dinner who has had it.  Whereas,” he went on louder, because I had opened my mouth and was going to say something, “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 woman.  “It need not,” he said angrily, “have taken one who was likely in any case to be selected for purposes of love-making, and given her, besides the ordinary collection of allurements provided by nature to attract the male, a Beethovenkopf.