enchantment. Some may have seen clearly, some darkly, but we were equal
before the throne of that mighty enchanter. And the enchanter bowed and
bowed with a grave, sympathetic smile, and then disappeared. I had not
clapped my hands; I had not moved. Only my full eyes had followed him as
he left the platform; and when he returned--because the applause would
not cease--my eyes watched over him as he came back to the centre of the
platform. He stood directly in front of me, smiling more gaily now. And
suddenly our glances met! Yes; I could not be mistaken. They met, and
mine held his for several seconds.... Diaz had looked at me. Diaz had
singled me out from the crowd. I blushed hotly, and I was conscious of a
surpassing joy. My spirit was transfigured. I knew that such a man was
above kings. I knew that the world and everything of loveliness that it
contained was his. I knew that he moved like a beautiful god through the
groves of delight, and that what he did was right, and whom he beckoned
came, and whom he touched was blessed. And my eyes had held his eyes for
a little space.

The enchantment deepened. I had read that the secret of playing Chopin
had died with Chopin; but I felt sure that evening, as I have felt sure
since, that Chopin himself, aristocrat of the soul as he was, would have
received Diaz as an equal, might even have acknowledged in him a
superior. For Diaz had a physique, and he had a mastery, a tyranny, of
the keyboard that Chopin could not have possessed. Diaz had come to the
front in a generation of pianists who had lifted technique to a plane of
which neither Liszt nor Rubinstein dreamed. He had succeeded primarily by
his gigantic and incredible technique. And then, when his technique had
astounded the world, he had invited the world to forget it, as the glass
is forgotten through which is seen beauty. And Diaz's gift was now such
that there appeared to intervene nothing between his conception of the
music and the strings of the piano, so perfected was the mechanism.