divine. What voice she had was managed with feeling and a pure method, and
where voice failed her the piano thrilled and sobbed, and broke in chords
like the sea.

"I can give you no idea of the effect that Tolstoi, combined with
Fraeulein's music, had upon me. My heart hung upon the pauses in her
song; it beat, as I read, as if I had been running. I would forget to
breathe between the pages. One day Fraeulein came in and found me in the
back chapters of 'Anna Karenina.' She had been playing one of Lizst's
rhapsodies--the twelfth. Waves of storm and passion had been thundering
through the house, with keen little rifts of melody between, too sweet
almost to be endured. She was very negligee, as the weather obliged us to
be. Her great white arms were bare above the elbow, and as wet as if she
had been over the wash-tub.

"'That is not a book for a _jeune fille_,' she said.

"I was in a rapture of excitement; the interruption made me wild. 'All the
books are for me,' I told her. 'I will read what I please.'

"'You will go mad!'

"I went on reading.

"'You have no way to work it off. You will not study, you cannot sing, you
write no letters, the mother does not believe'--

"'Do go away!' I cried.

"'--in the duty to the neighbor. Ach! what will you do with the whole of