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lawyer.
"'Oh, yes! I dare say; as for instance the young lady who has been thrumming the piece you have just played, but there is hardly more than one,—how can I express it?—well more than one sympathetic listener.'
"'What do you mean by a sympathetic listener?' asked Courtois, the stock-broker.
"'A person with whom a current seems to establish itself; some one who feels, while listening, exactly as I do whilst I am playing, who sees perhaps the same visions as I do—'
"'What! do you see visions when you play?' asked one of the bystanders, astonished.
"'Not as a rule, but always when I have a sympathetic listener?'
"'And do you often have such a listener?' said I, with a sharp pang of jealousy.
"'Often? Oh, no! seldom, very seldom, hardly ever in fact, and then'
"'Then what?'
"'Never like the one of this evening.'
"'And when you have no listener?' asked Courtois.
