Not today! No, never again would she sit by the window, her back turned so she would not see him walk down the flagstone path with Dr Danzer, the limp volume of her favourite Bach spread open to the first page of the text, the black notes swarming before her eyes, her fingers arching in elaborate dumb-show as they practised the first trill, her mind on the beats, the leaning upon the upper note, the precise apperception of the stopping point - not a moment to soon, not a moment too late - and in her ears once more the sound, the slow dignity, of Anna Magdalena's sarabande, a delicate ornament for her melancholy.

Author: John Franklin Bardin