There was a little scene the Monday evening before.
Henry stumbled in on the two of them, Mildred and Humphrey. They were at the piano, seated side by side. They had been studying _Tristan and Isolde_ together for a week or so; Mildred playing out the motifs. She often played the love duet from the second act for him, too. Henry heard him, mornings, trying to hum it while he shaved.
They insisted that he take a chair. He, with a sense of intrusion, took the arm of one, and kept hat and stick (his thin bamboo) in his hands.
'Corinne writes that she'll be back for a week late in August.' Then, noting the touch of dismay on Henry's ingenuous countenance, she added, 'But you mustn't have her on your conscience, Henry.'
'I'm fond of Corinne. But I can see now that you two would never get on long together. In a queer way you're too much alike. At least, you both have positive qualities. Corinne will some day find a nice little husband who'll look after the business side of her concerts. And you--well, Henry, you've got to have some one to mother you.' She smiled at him thoughtfully. 'Some one you can make a lot of.'
'No.' Henry's colour was up. He was shaking his head. 'You don't understand. I'm through with girls. They're nothing in my life. Nothing!'
She slowly shook her head. 'That's absurd, Henry. You're particularly the kind. You'll never be able to live without idealising some woman.'
'I tell you they're nothing to me. My life is different now. I've changed. I've put money--a lot of money--into the _Gleaner_. It means big responsibilities. You've no idea----'
'If I hadn't, seen you writing,' she mused aloud.... 'No, Henry. You won't change. You'll grow, but you won't change. You're going to write, Henry. And you'll always write straight at a woman.'
'No! No!' Henry was sputtering. He appeared to be struggling. 'Life means work to me. I'm through with----'
She took down the _Tristan_ score from the piano and turned the pages in her lap.
'Love is the great vitaliser, Henry,' she said.
'No--it's the mind. Thinking. We have to learn to think clearly--objectively.'
'Objectively? No. Not you. And I'm glad, in a way. Because I know we're going to be proud of you. But it's love that makes the world go round. They don't teach you that in the colleges, but it's the truth... Take Wagner--and _Tristan_. He wrote it straight at a woman. And it's the greatest opera ever written. And the greatest love story. It's that because he was terribly in love when he wrote it. Do you Suppose, for one minute that if Wagner had never seen Mathilde Wesendonck we should have had _Tristan?_'