You love music, I understand--you are a professional artist ?" "I was," I answered, "till my state of health stopped me from working." Heliobas bent his eyes upon me in friendly sympathy.
"You were, and you will be again, an improvisatrice" he went on.

"Do you not find it difficult to make your audiences understand your aims ?" I smiled as the remembrance of some of my experiences in public came to my mind.
"Yes," I said, half laughing.

"In England, at least, people do not know what is meant by IMPROVISING.

They think it is to take a little theme and compose variations on it--the mere ABC of the art.

But to sit down to the piano and plan a whole sonata or symphony in your head, and play it while planning it, is a thing they do not and will not understand.
They come to hear, and they wonder and go away, and the critics declare it to be CLAP-TRAP." "Exactly!" replied Heliobas.