terrible face. Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat
close up to Pharisees.

But although Kloster's music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies,
he himself wasn't like those tragic sellers. It was only that he was
so very ordinary,--a little man compact, apparently, of grossness, and
the music he was making was so divine. It was that marvellous French
and Russian stuff. I must play it to you, and play it to you, till you
love it. It's like nothing there has ever been. It is of an exquisite
youth,--untouched, fearless, quite heedless of tradition, going its own
way straight through and over difficulties and prohibitions that for
centuries have been supposed final. People like Wagner and Strauss and
the rest seem so much sticky and insanitary mud next to these exquisite
young ones, and so very old; and not old and wonderful like the great
men, Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, but uglily old like a noisy old
lady in a yellow wig.

The audience applauded, but wasn't quite sure. Such a master as
Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but
I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its
apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them. Germans have to
have beauty explained to them and accounted for,--stamped first by an
official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it. I sat in
a corner and cried, it was so lovely. I couldn't help it. I hid away
and pulled my hat over my face and tried not to, for there was a German
in eyeglasses near me, who, perceiving I wanted to hide, instantly
spent his time staring at me to find out why. The music held all
things in it that I have known or guessed, all the beauty, the wonder,
of life and death and love. I _recognised_ it. I almost called out,
"Yes--of course--_I_ know that too."