Yet he betrayed a democratic fondness for Wagner, and the "Tannhauser" overture, when she had given him the clew to it, claimed him as nothing else she played.

In an immediate way it personified his life.

All his past was the Venusburg motif, while her he identified somehow with the Pilgrim's Chorus motif; and from the exalted state this elevated him to, he swept onward and upward into that vast shadow-realm of spirit-groping, where good and evil war eternally.
Sometimes he questioned, and induced in her mind temporary doubts as to the correctness of her own definitions and conceptions of music.

But her singing he did not question.

It was too wholly her, and he sat always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice.