“He told me I was heartless.”

           On January 4, 1908, a mysterious young man paid Ima a visit. She wrote about him in her diary:

         

           “In the afternoon Ariel came to see me, making himself miserable again--I hoped he had understood after what I told him last summer. I acted like a cold blooded vampire--he told me I was heartless, but often I seemed to be sympathizing with him, it didn’t do at all--! Well, I was upset anyhow. He’s off for Heidelberg in the morning.”

         The reference to “last summer” means that she had met him soon after her arrival in Europe in July 1907. Where? What had she told him then? What was their relationship? Did she see him again?

         No one knows.

        

         In Berlin Ima met another young man, a violinist named Arthur Hartmann, who was just a year older than she. Like her, he was musically talented at a young age, playing his first concert at age 6. He had done an American tour in 1906-7. Did the two young musicians meet in New York while Ima was there?

         Ima kept a postcard card from Hartmann. a photo, signed “To Miss Hogg, Cordially, Arthur Hartmann, Berlin 1908.” He was young and gifted and handsome, with intense dark eyes and flowing black hair. . . .

         Who knows?