'Certainly.'

'Impossible! I should never dare! How do you know I can play at all?'

'You have just proved it to me,' said he. 'Come; you will not
refuse me this!'

I wanted to leave the vicinity of the piano. I felt that, once out of the
immediate circle of his tremendous physical influence, I might manage to
escape the ordeal which he had suggested. But I could not go away. The
silken nets of his personality had been cast, and I was enmeshed. And if
I was happy, it was with a dreadful happiness.

'But, really, I can't play with you,' I said weakly.

His response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder. His beautiful
face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naïve and strong
yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness,
and such perfect kindliness, that I had no more will to resist. I knew I
should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the
miraculous finesse of his performance, but I resigned myself to
suffering. I felt towards him as I had felt during the concert: that he
must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the
infinite gratitude of the entire world--in short, I raised him in my soul
to a god's throne; and I accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour
he did me. And I was right--a thousand times right.

And in the same moment he was like a charming child to me: such is always
in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the
creature born to suffer.