usic I did not enjoy; later this
feeling grew into positive dislike. I have never been a really good
accompanist because my ideas of interpretation were always too
strongly individual. I constantly forced my _accelerandos_ and
_rubatos_ upon the soloist, often throwing the duet entirely out of
gear.

Perhaps the reader has already guessed why I was so willing and
anxious to play the accompaniment to this violin solo; if not--the
violinist was a girl of seventeen or eighteen whom I had first heard
play a short time before on a Sunday afternoon at a special service
of some kind, and who had moved me to a degree which now I can hardly
think of as possible. At present I do not think it was due to her
wonderful playing, though I judge she must have been a very fair
performer, but there was just the proper setting to produce the effect
upon a boy such as I was; the half-dim church, the air of devotion on
the part of the listeners, the heaving tremor of the organ under
the clear wail of the violin, and she, her eyes almost closing, the
escaping strands of her dark hair wildly framing her pale face, and
her slender body swaying to the tones she called forth, all combined
to fire my imagination and my heart with a passion, though boyish, yet
strong and, somehow, lasting. I have tried to describe the scene; if I
have succeeded, it is only half success, for words can only partially
express what I wish to convey. Always in recalling that Sunday
afternoon I am sub-conscious of a faint but distinct fragrance which,
like some old memory-awakening perfume, rises and suffuses my whole
imagination, inducing a state of reverie so airy as just to evade the
powers of expression.

She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves. I dreamed
of her, I built air castles for her, she was the incarnation of each
beautiful heroine I knew; when I played the piano, it was to her, not
even music furnished an adequate outlet for my passion; I bought a new
note-book and, to sing her praises, made my first and last attempts
at poetry. I remember one day at school, after we had given in our
notebooks to have some exercises corrected, the teacher called me to
her desk and said: "I couldn't correct your exercises because I found
nothing in your book but a rhapsody on somebody's brown eyes." I had
passed in the wrong note-book. I don't think I have felt greater
embarrassment in my whole life than I did at that moment. I was
ashamed not only tha