You shall speak Italian, German, French or English, as I tell you." Neroda laughed with delight.

He loved the imaginative nature of the girl, who treated her violin as if it were a living thing, and whispered her secrets into the ear of her riding horse, and told love stories to her birds.
"In Italy," said Neroda, "a fiddler, if he really knows how to play dance music, can dance as well as play.

In those nights on the East Side, in New York, when I played for the workmen and working girls in their cheap finery, I went among the dancers myself while I played, and they always gave me a round of applause and danced harder themselves." Anita suddenly swept the strings with her bow and dashed into another Hungarian dance of Brahms, herself taking pretty dancing steps and pirouetting as she played, sinking upon one knee and then rising, the toe of her little slipper pointing skyward.

She felt an unaccountable gaiety of heart that day.

Why, she knew not, only that some strong current of emotion inspired her arms, her hands, her little, twinkling feet, as she danced the length of the drawing-room and back again.