or his work was considered an expression of
youthful waywardness. Perhaps that was why Wunsch remembered him best.
Thea studied some of the KINDERSZENEN with him, as well as some little
sonatas by Mozart and Clementi. But for the most part Wunsch stuck to
Czerny and Hummel.

Harsanyi found in Thea a pupil with sure, strong hands, one who read
rapidly and intelligently, who had, he felt, a richly gifted nature. But
she had been given no direction, and her ardor was unawakened. She had
never heard a symphony orchestra. The literature of the piano was an
undiscovered world to her. He wondered how she had been able to work so
hard when she knew so little of what she was working toward. She had
been taught according to the old Stuttgart method; stiff back, stiff
elbows, a very formal position of the hands. The best thing about her
preparation was that she had developed an unusual power of work. He
noticed at once her way of charging at difficulties. She ran to meet
them as if they were foes she had long been seeking, seized them as if
they were destined for her and she for them. Whatever she did well, she
took for granted. Her eagerness aroused all the young Hungarian's
chivalry. Instinctively one went to the rescue of a creature who had so
much to overcome and who struggled so hard. He used to tell his wife
that Miss Kronborg's hour took more out of him than half a dozen other
lessons. He usually kept her long over time; he changed her lessons
about so that he could do so, and often gave her time at the end of the
day, when he could talk to her afterward and play for her a little from
what he happened to be studying. It was always interesting to play for
her. Sometimes she was so silent that he wondered, when she left him,
whether she had got anything out of it. But a week later, two weeks
later, she would give back his idea again in a way that set him
vibrating.

All this was very well for Harsanyi; an interesting variation in the
routine of teaching. But for Thea Kronborg, that winter was almost
beyond enduring. She always remembered it as the happiest and wildest
and saddest of her life. Things came too fast for her; she had not had
enough preparation. There were times when she came home from her lesson
and lay upon her bed hating Wunsch and her family, hating a world that
had let her grow up so ignorant; when she wished that she could die then
and there, and be born over again to begin anew. She said something of
this