She had seen Florence that day with a group of people at the pool beyond the town where boats were paddled about. She gave the top of her mind to the trill, the finger pressed firmly down on the string, but underneath a voice recounted Albert’s words, hurled them out between the running web of the trill. “Some day I aim to smash that old fiddle into the middle of perdition.” Her fingers were joyous over the trill; she and her fingers were one and they would ride together on the top of the world. She comprehended Florence then and dwelt upon her minutely, saw her quick smile that knew all the inner part of a man or of a woman. Albert’s voice again: “You’re too full of joy. I aim to take some of the joy out of you.” The bird tones of the trill crashed over the words and lanced each one with a sharp dart. “Two months from now I aim to do’t. Take your time.” She had spent a month with the scales and then had set upon the harmony again, mornings when her pencil dribbled small black egg-shaped dots on the scaffolding set up by the staff and bound them together with a swift down-stroke, her ear hearing tone set upon tone in a fullness of design, the fear in her inner thought, but the fear had slunk away before her new joy and it was now only a dim thing, abstracted, unremembered, too remote to visit any image. Florence Agnew spread pleasure over the town and over the bodies of men and women, and all were more intensely alive. “A week now, I give you. The kind of lover you’ll want. I’ll close in against the week’s done,” the words met the bird-singing of the trill that twittered over them and brooded them in kindness. Her mind was suffused with half-knowing, drunk with sense, but her fingers knew their cleverness and the trill lived on while she floated in the reality of consenting fiber and essence. “His strength, it’s what I need after all,” she said wisely, looking at the chin-piece of the instrument, looking at the threads of the bow, her mouth speaking coolly above the languor of her blood. A day two weeks earlier reappeared to be lived more minutely than in its first appearing, and another day later. The present week cried out for recognition; he had sent her a note from Corinth and another from Mayfair Church. He had called her by the telephone the night before, “To hear the sound of you again,” saying, and “Three days and I’ll come back. Mark on your calendar, you better.” The voices became entirely real: “You better mark on your calendar. It’ll be a red-letter day, against I come, red for you.” “Will it?” “You’ll see. If you hadn’t wanted me you would ’a’ stopped me long ago. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. You’ll see.” “Will I?” “You’ll see in three days’ time.” * * * * * Conway was coming into the parlor, her “Come” making a recitative as she sang it against the continued trill. He looked at her appealingly and stopped his ears against the shrill high notes. “Getten ready for a contest?” he asked.