virtuosos, and musical critics.

Some had heard of him; to them he appeared to be a remarkable man. They
threw out their nets to catch him, but he slipped through the meshes.
Unprepared, however, as he was for their schemes, he could not help
being caught in time. He had to give an account of himself, to unveil
himself. He found himself under obligations, interested, and so forth,
but in the end they could not prevail against him: he simply passed
through them.

They laughed at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was
his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they
found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate
with him, he would disappear entirely from them for months at a time.

A divorced young woman, a Jewess by the name of Regina Sussmann, fell in
love with him. She recognised in Daniel an elemental nature. The more he
avoided her the more persistent she became. At times it made him feel
good to come once again into intimate association with a woman, to hear
her bright voice, her step more delicate, her breathing more ardent than
that of men. But he could not trust Regina Sussmann; she seemed to know
too much. There was nothing of the plant-like about her, and without
that characteristic any woman appealed to him as being unformed and
uncultured.

One winter day she came to see him in his barren hall room in Greifswald
Street. She sat down at the piano and began to improvise. At first it
was all like a haze to him. Suddenly he was struck by her playing. What
he heard made a half disagreeable, half painful impression on him. He
seemed to be familiar with the piece. She was playing motifs from his
quartette, his "Eleanore Quartette" as he had called it. It came out
that Regina Sussmann had been present at the concert given in Leipzig
three years ago when the quartette was performed.

After a painful pause Regina began to ask some questions that cut him to
the very heart. She wanted to know what relation, if any, the
composition bore to actual life. She was trying to lift the veil from
his unknown fate. He thrust her from him. Then he felt sorry for her: he
began to speak, with some hesitation, of his symphony. There was
something bewitching, enchanting in the woman's passionate silence and
sympathy. He lost himself, forgot himself, disclosed his heart. He built
up the work in words before her, pictured the seven movements like seven
stairs in the tower