He sat on the soft steep bank, turned on his elbow, gazing within. The same voices drifted from the porch, voices gay or placid, and contained laughter. A chair scraped. It was all very close to Harry Baggs--and in another world. There was a movement within the house; a window leaped into lighted existence and then went out against the wall. Immediately after, a faint pure harmony of strings drifted out to the hedge. It was so unexpected, so lovely, that Harry Baggs sat with suspended breath. The strings made a pattern of simple harmony; and then, without warning, a man's voice, almost like his own, began singing. The tones rose fluid and perfect, and changed with feeling. It seemed at first to be a man; and then, because of a diminuendo of the voice, a sense of distance not accounted for by his presence near the hedge, he knew that he heard a record of the actual singing. The voice, except for its resemblance to his own, did not absorb his attention; it was the song itself that thrilled and held him. He had never before heard music at once so clear and capable of such depths. He realized instinctively, with a tightening of his heart, that he was listening to one of the great songs of which Janin had spoken. It hung for a minute or more in his hearing, thrilling every nerve, and then died away. It stopped actually, but its harmony rang in Harry Baggs' brain. Instantly it had become an essential, a permanent part of his being. It filled him with a violent sense of triumph, a richness of possession that gave birth to a new unconquerable pride. He rose, waited for a short space; but nothing more followed. He was glad of that; he had no wish to blur the impressions of the first. Harry Baggs hurried up the road and crossed the field to where he had left French Janin. The latter was still sleeping, crumpled against the vegetation. Baggs grasped the thin shoulder, shook him into consciousness. “I have just heard something,” he said. “Listen! What is it?” He sang without further preliminary, substituting a blank phrasing for uncomprehended words; but the melody swept without faltering to its conclusion. Janin answered irritably, disturbed by his rude awakening: “The Serenade from Don Giovanni--Mozart. Well, what about it?” “It's wonderful!” Harry Baggs declared. “Are there any more as great?” “It is good,” Janin agreed, his interest stirred; “but there are better--the Dio Possente, the Brindisi from Hamlet. Once I led the finale of Hamlet. I saw the Director----” “I'll get every one,” the boy interrupted. “There are others now, newer--finer still, I'm told; but I don't know.” Janin rose and steadied himself against the fence. “Give me a start. I've been getting confused lately; I don't seem to keep a direction like I could. From Don Giovanni: _'Deh vieni alla finestra_'--'Come to the window' 's about it. I'm glad you're not a tenor; they're delicate and mean. But you are a fine boy, Harry; you'll take the old man up along with you!”