" Who then would, for the sake of Wasendonck's honour,
destroy the score of "Tristan"? Nor is the story of "Tristan" the only
one, nor the most famous. There is also the story of Helen. If
Menelaus's wife had not been unfaithful to him, the world would have
been the poorer of the greatest of all poems, the "Iliad" and the
"Odyssey." Dear me, when one thinks of it, one must admit that art
owes a great deal to adultery. Children are born of the marriage,
stories of the adulterous bed, and the world needs both--stories as
well as children. Even my little tale would not exist if Doris had
been a prudent maiden, nor would it have interested me to listen to
her that day by the sea if she had naught to tell me but her
unswerving love for Albert. Her story is not what the world calls a
great story, and it would be absurd to pretend that if a shorthand
writer had taken it down his report would compare with the stories of
Isolde and Helen, but I heard it from her lips, and her tears and her
beauty replaced the language of Wagner and of Homer; and so well did
they do this that I am not sure that the emotion I experienced in
listening to her was less than that which I have experienced before a
work of art.
"Do you know," she began, "perhaps you don't, perhaps you've never
loved enough to know the anxiety one may feel for the absent.
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