After dinner S----- sang to us, magnificently, of course.

Then she herself graciously turned to me, said how much she had heard from the Maestro in my praise, and so and so.

I was persuaded to sing after her.

I need not say to what disadvantage.

But I forgot my nervousness; I forgot my audience; I forgot myself, as I always do when once my soul, as it were, finds wing in music, and buoys itself in the air, relieved from the sense of earth.