, "I really called to play this over with the master. Shall you
mind if I scratch it through?"

I tried to assure him of the abiding pleasure that I, a young stranger,
would receive from being honoured by permission to remain.

"Oh, that's all right," he said unaffectedly; "we are all in the trade,
you know; you sing, I play."

Mendelssohn sat at the piano and David tuned his instrument. Mendelssohn
used no copy. His memory was prodigious. The violin gave out a
beautiful melody that soared passionately, yet gracefully, above an
accompaniment, simple at first, but growing gradually more intense and
insistent till a great climax was reached, after which the solo voice
sank slowly to a low, whispering murmur, while the piano played above it
a succession of sweetly delicate and graceful phrases. The movement was
worked out with the utmost complexity and brilliance, but came suddenly
to an end. The playing of the two masters was beyond description.

"The cadenza is subject to infinite alteration," remarked Mendelssohn;
and turning to me, he continued, "the movement is unfinished, you see;
and even what is written may be greatly changed. I fear I am a
fastidious corrector. I am rarely satisfied with my first thoughts."

"Well, I don't think much change is wanted here," said David. "I'm
longing to have the rest of it. When will it be ready?"

Mendelssohn shook his head with a smile. "Ask me for it in five years,
David."

"What do you think of it, Bennett?" asked the violinist.

"I was thinking that we are in the garden of Eden," said Bennett,
oracularly.

"What do you mean?" asked Mendelssohn.

"This," explained Bennett: "there seems to me something essentially and
exquisitely feminine about this movement, just as in Beethoven's
Concerto there is something essentially and heroically masculine. In
other words, he has made the Adam of Concertos, and you have mated it
with the Eve. Henceforth," he continued, waving his hands in
benediction, "the tribe of Violin Concertos shall increase and multiply
and become as the stars of heaven in multitude."

"The more the merrier," cried David, "at least for fiddlers--I don't
know what the audiences will think."

"Audiences don't think--at least, not in England," said Bennett.

"Come, come!" interposed Mendelssohn; and turning to me with a smile he
said, "Will you allow Mr. Bennett to slander your countrymen like this?"

"But Mr. Bennett doesn't mean it," I replied; "he know