It was a day in June, in the year 1902. They are much the same everywhere, only in Georgia there is more June in such a day. Farther south the withering heat hints of July; farther north there may be an edge of cold to the air; but in Georgia it is always perfectly June in June, all softness, fragrance, filled with the fearless growth and bloom of every living thing--the sort of day that seems to hum to itself with the wings of a thousand bees; adolescent weather, fragrant, soft, filled with the growth and yearning of every living thing from the frailest flower that blooms to the oldest tree and the oldest man. On such a day this story begins, somewhere between half past three and four o’clock in the afternoon. The exact moment makes no difference because nothing that you could see with the naked eye happened when the first scene was laid. (It is only the comedies and crimes of living that catch the eye. The great dramas and the great tragedies begin within, and they end there.) The town was somnambulent--very little traffic; none at all on Wiggs Street. You could only have known by the gentle bending of the frailer-stemmed flowers before the cottages on either side that even a breeze was passing by. But over all this stillness and piercing this droning silence came the notes of a piano, sad, sweet and frequently too far apart, as if this piano waited patiently while the performer found the next note, and then found it again on the keyboard. These desiccated fragments of Narcissus, a popular instrumental piece at that time, issued from the parlor windows of the Adams cottage. Some one, who had no ear for music, but only a conscience, was practicing inside. Presently this conscience was satisfied, for the lid of the piano went down with a thud. There was a quick step, the whisk of white skirts in the darkened hall, the opening and closing of a door, followed by what we must infer was a sort of primping silence. Then a voice, firm and maternal, came through the front bedroom window on that side of the house: “Helen, why are you wearing your organdie?” “I don’t know, mother,” a young voice answered. I doubt if she did know. Some of the shrewdest acts of a maiden are unintelligible to her. “Well, it is silly, putting on your nice things to go to choir practice.” It was silly, but one frequently makes the silliest preparations for happiness. This is the wisdom of youth. Age cannot beat it. After a pause, the same elder voice, made smoother--“Have you seen George?” “Not in two years. Why?” “He has been at home a week, hasn’t he?” “I don’t know when he came.” The tone implied that the comings and goings of this George were matters of supreme indifference to her. “Mrs. Cutter told me his father means for him to work this summer.” No response. “He had three months in the University School of Finance last summer, she told me. This summer his father plans to put him through, she said.” Still no response.