"Mr. Chopin," and the girl was afraid that they might tease her, and make sport of him, if he called to see her. She contrived to meet him, as if accidentally, next morning, in the stream of college students that drew in from all the neighbouring streets, at nine o'clock, to the beginning of the day's lectures; and he learned from her that he might find her coming from her music lessons at eleven o'clock on certain mornings and at five o'clock on other afternoons.
For the moment, it was all he wished—the opportunity of having her, if but for ten minutes, alone and out of doors, away from the formality of parlour conversation and the curious eyes of household gossips. With a young lover's instinct, he wished to preserve their intercourse from the touch and soiling of everyday life. And he parted from her on a street corner, without taking her to the gate, glad to see from her manner that she did not wish their meetings to be known.
It was the fresh beginning of one of those strange courtships of young people which appear to the onlooker so amusingly tame. He had suddenly grown humble with her. Compared with his own social awkwardness, she seemed to him discouragingly bright and talented. Sitting in his room of an evening, he pictured her, in the midst of light and company, charming everybody with her piano-playing and accepting their congratulations with an unembarrassed smile. Working at his studies in the college library, worried by the uncertain prospect of his future, she seemed one of those happy aristocrats
