a skilful violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a
good ear, and was to be a singer--for before this Juggernaut, prejudice
went down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should
be a clerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror;
but music!--that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single
one of the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted
her sex a share.

"Ask Franz," she said to Maurice. "Franz knows. He will explain. All
women can do is to reproduce what some one else has thought or felt."

As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she invariably fell
back on Clara Schumann, with whom she had more than once come into
personal contact. In her youth, Frau Furst had had a clear soprano
voice, and, to Maurice's interest, she told him how she had sometimes
been sent for to the Schumann's house in the INSELSTRASSE, to sing
Robert's songs for him.

"Clara accompanied me," she said, relating this, the great
reminiscence of her life; "and he was there, too, although I never saw
him face to face. He was too shy for that. But he was behind a screen,
and sometimes he would call: 'I must alter that; it is too high;' or
'Quicker, quicker!' Sometimes even 'Bravo!'"

Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the few
diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre--when Franz
had tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas was
performed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death--and, on such
occasions, she pointed out to the younger children, the links that
bound and would yet bind them to the great house.