anything in the world be a trouble...'

'Trouble, indeed, what nonsense! Now then, Susanna Ivanovna, eins, zwei,
drei!'

Susanna made no response, and went out.


XIII


I had not expected her to come back; but she quickly reappeared. She had
not even changed her dress, and sitting down in a corner, she looked
twice intently at me. Whether it was that she was conscious in my manner
to her of the involuntary respect, inexplicable to myself, which, more
than curiosity, more even than sympathy, she aroused in me, or whether
she was in a softened frame of mind that day, any way, she suddenly went
to the piano, and laying her hand irresolutely on the keys, and turning
her head a little over her shoulder towards me, she asked what I would
like her to play. Before I had time to answer she had seated herself,
taken up some music, hurriedly opened it, and begun to play. I loved
music from childhood, but at that time I had but little comprehension of
it, and very slight knowledge of the works of the great masters, and if
Mr. Ratsch had not grumbled with some dissatisfaction, 'Aha! wieder
dieser Beethoven!' I should not have guessed what Susanna had chosen. It
was, as I found out afterwards, the celebrated sonata in F minor, opus
57. Susanna's playing impressed me more than I can say; I had not
expected such force, such fire, such bold execution. At the very first
bars of the intensely passionate allegro, the beginning of the sonata, I
felt that numbness, that chill and sweet terror of ecstasy, which